
mm 



J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. J 

| 



| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, f 



SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. 



A BOOK FOR LITTLE PEOPLE. 



By E: F. BURR, D.D., 

AUTHOR OF " ECCB CCELITM," ETC. 



New yor\K : 



NELSON & PHILLIPS. 

CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. 
SUNDAY-SCHOOL DEPARTMENT. 

n 



3* 



T&t Library 
Congress 

washington 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

NELSON & PHILLIPS, 
in the Oflice of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
I. The Soul 5 

II. The Angels 34 

m God _ . 56 

IT. The Empire of God 79 

Y. The Laws of God, 103 

VI. The Word of God 124 



SUNDAY AFTEKNOONS. 



THE SOUL. 



IF I should ask you to tell me the names 
of all the things you have ever seen, 
you would think it very strange, and 
perhaps would say, " Why, sir, I could not 
begin to do such a thing. There are 
houses, flowers, trees, cattle, birds, men, 
lightning, fires, clouds, rivers, hills, fruit, 
grain, sun, moon, stars — and ten thousand 
things besides. Why, sir, I could not be- 
gin to tell all the things I have seen, they 
are so many." 

You are right. Neither you nor the 
greatest man can tell even all the wonder* 
ful things, above, beneath, around you, that 
can be seen in a single day. How beauti- 
ful many of these things are ! Did you 



6 Sunday Afternoons. 

never take up a little flower, or a little 
shell, or a little butterfly, and hold it close 
to your eyes and see what soft, rich colors, 
and what bright, wavy, graceful lines there 
were all about it ? How grand many of 
these things are — the great hills with their 
tops in the clouds ; the great rivers, bearing 
up the heavy vessels as if they were so 
many feathers, and sweeping them off into 
the broad sea ; the great world itself, which, 
as you have been told at school, is thou- 
sands of miles around and holds hundreds 
of millions of people ; above all, the glo- 
rious sun in the sky, a million of times 
larger than this world, and so bright that 
the strongest eyes dare not look it full in 
the face ! How awful are some of the 
things you now and then see — for just 
think of the lightning as it shoots its forked 
tongue toward you ; the storm that, black 
as night, comes down on the woods, and 
makes them toss and break in the roaring 
wind ! And then what wise and beautiful 
contrivances there are in almost every thing 



The Soul. 7 

you see — in the bird that darts so swiftly 
through the air ; in the fish that cuts the 
water so easily ; in the squirrel that runs 
so nimbly from stone to stone and from 
branch to branch ; in your own bodies, 
with hands to catch, and feet to run, and 
eyes to see, and ears to hear, and tongue 
to talk, and a hundred other things to do 
as many other things with ! 

Now I want you to attend well to what 
I am about to say to you. I am about to 
say a very important thing, one which many 
older persons than you need to hear. It is 
this. These things which you see are not 
the only real things ; nor are they even the 
most beautiful, grand, important, and 
nicely made of real things. I know of 
something that is greatly better in all these 
respects. People sometimes call it spirit 
No eyes such as we have ever saw it : no 
such eyes ever can see it. It is every- where 
about you, and yet, however sharp you 
may look, you will never be able to catch 
the first glimpse of it. Your eyes are 



8 Sunday Afteenoons. 

bright and young ; whatever eyes can do 
no doubt they can do ; but this I know, 
that they never yet saw that wonderful 
thing called spirit, and never will see it. 
You can see what it does very often — you 
can hear and feel what it does almost every 
moment ; but, as to the thing itself, you 
cannot ever set eyes or hands on it. And 
yet it is a real thing — as real as any rock 
or tree — a very beautiful, and grand, and 
important thing, too, and full of marks of 
glorious wisdom — much more so than such 
things as flowers, mountains, storms, suns. 
You cannot think how great and impor- 
tant a thing this same spirit is, and how 
important it is that you should know about 
it, though you cannot see it. It is because 
it is so important that I will now try to 
tell von something; about it as well as I 
can. 

There are different sorts of spirit, just 
as there are different sorts among the things 
that you see. There is the black iron, the 
white silver, and the yellow gold ; there is 



The Soul. 9 

the common stone of the field and street, 
the white, smooth marble which you see in 
the church-yard, and the dazzling diamond 
set in the crown of a king ; there is the 
dull clod that the plow turns over, the 
flesh of your cheek, soft and red with 
youth, and the quick, bright lightning that 
plays and darts so fiercely about the edge 
of the thunder-cloud : these all are things 
that can be seen, only different sorts of 
them. Just so there are very different 
sorts of spirit, and especially three sorts 
which we happen to know very well. One 
is called soul, another is called angel, and 
still another is called God. I will not 
speak to you about all of these just now : 
only about the first, the soul. You have 
heard this word before many a time ; but 
not so many, I dare say, that you cannot 
hear it many more times without hearing 
it too much. 

Somewhere within your body — I will 
not undertake to say where — is a some- 
thing which you cannot see any more than 



10 Sunday Afternoons. 

if it were at the other side of the world ; 
which has no weight, nor color, nor size, 
nor shape that we know of, but which 
is very, very active, and can think and feel 
and choose. This is what looks out at 
your eyes, and pictures itself in your whole 
face, and speaks in the words you use. 
This is what sets your hands and feet in 
motion, makes you able to play or work or 
study, makes you able to see and hear and 
smell and taste. Without the soul within 
you, you would be like a dead person — 
stiff, silent, doing nothing, knowing noth- 
ing. When you look at a watch you see 
the hands moving over its white face, and 
the faint tick never fails to reach your ears 
at every second ; but what makes the watch 
go and beat the time is not any thing that 
you see ; it is something inside that keeps 
silently pulling on the wheels ; it is the 
spring all covered up out of sight. And 
what puts all the motion and sound into 
that body of yours is not any thing that 
you see, but that unseen thing within 



The Soul 11 

which thinks, feels, and chooses, and which 
men call the soul. 

I say that you do not see your soul. 
No wonder, for it is within you. But you 
might even take a human body all to 
pieces, and watch very carefully while 
doing it, and yet you would not find the 
soul anywhere. Your eyes are not sharp 
enough to see such things, just as they are 
not sharp enough to see the air in this 
room and a great many things besides. 
No, you can neither see nor handle the 
soul ; but still we can know perfectly well 
that every body has a soul living in it just 
as a man does in a house. Suppose you 
should stand before a house and see smoke 
coming out of the chimney ; see windows 
and doors and blinds open and shut; see 
curtains let down and raised ; see lights 
shining through the windows, and moving 
about from room to room, and sometimes 
making shadows, as of persons, across the 
panes ; hear music coming from it in many 
well-known tunes — you would have no 



12 Sunday Afteknoons. 

doubt somebody lived in the house, though 
you never happened to see any one plainly 
showing himself at the window or coming 
out at the door. Even if you should find 
the door locked, and, on breaking it open, 
should find nobody in any of the rooms, 
you would still be sure that somebody has 
been living there and has either hid or 
slipped out at the back door while you 
were getting in — especially if you should 
find all sorts of furniture about, and even 
fires burning, table set, food all ready to 
be eaten, and should hear sounds as of 
feet going away. You would say, " Sure 
enough some one has been living here, but 
for some reason does not wish to be seen." 
So w r e know by a thousand simis that 
something lives in our bodies, very differ- 
ent from them, that thinks, feels, chooses, 
remembers, hopes, fears, loves, hates, en- 
joys, suffers, is bad or good. It speaks in 
the face, shines in the eyes, talks with the 
tongue, works with the hands, walks with 
the feet, does right or wrong with the 



The Soul 13 

whole body: and when learned people 
look into the body they find it all fitted 
up as splendidly for a soul to live in as 
ever a palace was for a king. 

Now there are some things that I wish 
to tell you about this soul that lives in the 
body just as if it were a house. We do 
not know all about it although it is so 
near us, and we carry it about with us all 
the while. For example, we do not know 
what it is made of, what shape it has, how 
it moves the hands and feet and other 
parts of the body, how it sees with the 
eyes and hears with the ears, how it is 
fastened to the body, or exactly in what 
part of the body it lives. A great many 
such things we do not know. But many 
other things we do know, and I will now 
tell you some of them. 

Souls are very many — as many at least 
as there are living human bodies in the 
world. Each of us has a soul in his body. 
Every little child, however small and 
wherever living, has a soul, as well as 



14 8uot>ay AFTERNOONS. 

every grown-up person. All the black 
people, such as live in Africa : all the red 

people, such as once lived here and were 
called Indians : all the olive people, such 
as live in some parts ol Asia : these all 
have souls as well as white people. So 
have all poor and homely and ignorant and 
bad persons, as well as the rich and fair 
and wise and good — all the poor heathen 
away at the ends of the earth, worshiping 
idols, as well as such people as live here 
and till our churches on Sundays. Do not 
forget this : for some persons act as if they 
thought that onlv a few have souls — a few 
rich or great or wise people. And most 
men seem to forget for a large part of the 
time that they themselves and their chil- 
dren, to say nothing about the heathen, 
have souls to be taken care ol. You your- 
self are in danger of living: iust as if vou 
have no soul. So I charge you to remem- 
ber that there is a soul within every 

human bod v. 

•/ 

These souls are not all exactly alike. 



The Soul 15 

Very far from it. They differ as much 
from each other as do the bodies in which 
thev live. One is laro;e, another small. 
One is strong, another weak. One is swift, 
another slow. Some are bright and strong 
and swift for some things, others for other 
things. One seems made to fill great 
places and do great things, another seems 
made for a small place and work. Indeed, 
souls differ as much as do houses and 
trees : and you know that scarcely any two 
of these are exactly alike. AVe could not 
bring all our souls to be exactly alike if 
we should try. Some seem to try, but 
they never succeed. And it is not best 
that they should. We need to have souls 
differ from each other so that they may fill 
different places and do different sorts of 
work. So thev are made verv unlike as to 
what thev are able to do, and as to what 
they like to do. Every teacher or father 
has to remember this very often. And 
now you understand a part of the reason 
why ministers and Sunday-school teachers 



16 Sunday Afternoons. 

try to talk to children and others in so 
many different ways. It is because souls 
differ as much among themselves as do the 
leaves on the trees when the first frosts 
have touched them. What different colors, 
as well as shapes and sizes and ways of 
hanging ! No two are alike. 

All souls began only a little while ago. 
If I should ask you how old you are, you 
would answer, six, ten, fifteen years, as 
the case may be. This tells how old 
your body is, and it also tells how old 
your soul is. It is a new thing. A very 
short time ago nobody knew any thing 
about it — it did not know any thing about 
itself. There was no thinking, no feeling, 
no choosing, no any thing that belongs to 
it now. But on a sudden it began to be. 
Almost as it were yesterday, your soul 
aw^oke in its fresh, new body — remember- 
ing nothing, and looking out through the 
windows of your new eyes on a world that 
seemed quite new and strange. It felt it- 
self just beginning to live. And it was. 



The Soul 17 

Some souls in the world are older than 
yours, but none of them go back very far. 
A hundred years ago scarcely a single one 
of them was to be found. I am speaking 
now of souls that are living at the present 
time in the millions of human bodies all 
oyer the world. And, for my part, I do 
not believe that there is a human soul 
anywhere that is much more than six 
thousand years old. Perhaps this seems 
a long time to you, but it does not to me. 
At any rate, you will agree with me that it 
is but a very short time since your soul 
began. 

When souls beo;in to be, every thing 
about them is very weak and small. You 
know how weak the body of the little babe 
is. It cannot walk ; it cannot hold itself 
up ; it cannot even creep at the very first. 
Some one must do every thing for it, it is 
so helpless. If left to itself it would die. 
Xow the soul of this babe is just as weak 
as its body. It knows scarcely any thing, 
it can do scarcely any thing. And when 



18 Sunday Afternoons. 

the babe becomes the little child that runs 
about, its knowledge and strength of all 
sorts, though greater, are still small. They 
grow somewhat as the little body grows ; 
but every child is far from having as large 
and strong a soul as a full-grown man. 
So the law r s put him under the care of 
parents and others, who are to teach him, 
and show him what he must do, and bring 
him up. God also does the same. And, 
instead of being headstrong and wise in 
their own conceit, he bids them be mod- 
est, respectful, teachable, and obedient — as 
becomes mere beginners in life. I have 
known some children who seemed to think 
themselves as wise as Solomon, and who 
scorned to be taught and governed by 
anybody. And they were very unlovely 
and very foolish. I hope you will not be 
like tbem. On the contrary, always re- 
member that all voung souls are small and 
weak. 

Souls not only begin very small and 
weak, but, what is a great deal worse, they 



The Soul. 19 

begin very sinful. You know all too 
well what it is to be sinful — what it is to 
do wrong, and what it is to find it easier 
and pleasanter to do wrong than to do 
right. You have tried it. And all have 
tried it from the time they were born. 
Among all the millions of souls that have 
lived, there have been only three that be- 
gan good, and only one soul that both be- 
gan and continued good. I think you do 
not need to have me tell you who these 
were. All the rest have been bad at the 
beginning, and more or less bad all their 
days. And, to-day, there is not a single 
soul in all the world but is sinful and 
always has been. The best children have 
evil hearts. You do a great many wrong 
things, and always have done them ; and 
it is because your soul is out of order, in- 
clined to do evil rather than good ; as we 
say, corrupt I will not now try to tell 
you how this happened. It is enough for 
the present for you to know that it did 
happen, and that nothing worse could pos- 



20 Sukday Afteeistooks. 

sibly have befallen us. There is no trouble 
like a bad heart. It is much worse than 
a sickty body. People are sometimes born 
with this, and we are sorry for them. But 
a sickly, corrupt, sinful soul — a soul that 
is all the while trying to be wrong and do 
wrong, as water tries to run down hill — is 
much worse. All our other troubles come 
from this. If there had never been any 
sin there would never have been any sor- 
row. All the pains and groans and tears 
we know of came from this root. I hope 
you will remember this also, and always 
think it a very sad thing to have a sinful 
soul. And it would be a much sadder 
thing than it is if one could never get rid 
of this sinfulness ; but this every one can 
do — by degrees. By degrees he can get 
the better of this soul-sickness, just as we 
sometimes get the better of a sickness of 
the body. We call a doctor, we take 
some medicine, we get a good nurse, and 
after a while we be^in to mend. We have 
less and less pain, our eyes grow brighter, 



The Soul 21 

the color comes back to our cheeks, our 
appetite comes slowly back, we get new 
strength day by day, at last we walk 
abroad and go about our business as usual. 
We are well. 

So we can get the better of our sins, 
and indeed of almost every thing about the 
soul that we do not like. I have told you 
how weak and narrow the soul is at first. 
But souls are growing things. They can 
be made to grow without stopping as long 
as we live. Your body must stop grow- 
ing after a little while, but your soul can 
grow and grow and still grow without 
end. It will never get so large and strong 
that it cannot be larger and stronger. It 
can always be wiser and better and more 
powerful to-day than it was yesterday. I 
do not say that it will certainly improve 
in this way, only that it can do so. There 
is nothing that need hinder. If it should 
live forever it could grow forever. The 
trees grow about so tall and then stop : 
they never grow any more, though they 



22 Su:ot)ay Afternoons. 

live a thousand years afterward. So with 
every sort of animals — each has a certain 
small size which it never goes beyond, 
however long it lives. Nothing can keep 
such things growing. No care, no food, no 
rest, no nursing. They will even become 
smaller and weaker as they become old ; 
but the soul — every soul, your soul — can 
be so managed that every year it lives 
shall see it brighter and fairer and stronger 
and larger. It is more elastic than any 
thing; we know of. It is like a certain 
tent which we read about in the fables. 
It could always be stretched a little more. 
To-day it covers but a single man. By 
and by it will cover his whole family. 
When that famil} 7 has grown into a tribe 
the tent will still be found capacious 
enough to cover them all. And when the 
tribe has become a nation and fills all 
Arabia with its people, all its millions 
will be sheltered just as well by that ever- 
growing silk as was the first man who 
used it. 



The Soul 23 

Now I come to something that makes 
this fact very important. This is that 
souls will have an opportunity to grow 
and improve forever. They have but a 
short life to look backward to, but they 
have a very long life to look forward to. 
Just think of it — this young soul of yours 
is to live fokeveb, fokevek ! It has no 
death about it. You could not kill it if 
you would ; nor could the strongest man 
that ever breathed. Sickness cannot touch 
it. It cannot be pierced, or crushed, or 
burned, or drowned. Battles and armies 
even, with their sharp swords and shotted 
cannon, cannot make an end of it or even 
hurt it. Hundreds after hundreds of years 
will pass, thousands after thousands, mill- 
ions after millions, and yet not one wonder- 
ful soul of all the many now on the earth will 
have ceased to be, or even have grown old. 
They will be as fresh as ever ; nay, fresher 
and stronger and more active as the ages 
go by ! Is it not a great thing to think 
of that these souls of ours that so lately 



24 Sunday Afternoons. 

began will go on living, acting, thinking, 
feeling, growing without end ? 

But^ though all our souls will live for- 
ever, none of them will live always, or 
even a great while, in the bodies we now 
have. Sometimes a man's house is burned 
and then he moves into another. Always 
it grows old and crazy, and at last falls 
down, and then the man is found living 
in another. So it will be with the body- 
houses which our souls live in. Some of 
them will go to pieces before their time — 
burned up by fevers, torn down by what 
people call accidents — perhaps before an- 
other year has gone. Others will last 
several years, growing larger, stronger, and 
firmer at first, and then weaker and weaker, 
till at last they will become so old and 
tottering that our souls can stay in them 
no longer. The same day and hour that 
they fall the souls will go out to find 
somewhere else to live. 

Where will they go ? Go somewhere 
they must, for they must live and live for- 



The Soul 25 

ever, and they can no longer live in their 
old homes. Where will they go ? Xow 
it so happens that I can answer this ques- 
tion just as well as if I had already seen 
souls go out of their bodies and had fol- 
lowed them. I have been told by One 
who knows — One that it were wicked and 
dreadful not to believe — that they will go 
to one of two places. One of these places 
is that u Happy Land ? ' of which you have 
so often sung. It is a most beautiful 
place. Yon never dreamed of any thing 
half so beautiful. Your parents and oth- 
ers that love vou conld not wish any thing 
better for yon than that you might go at 
last to live in such a place. A man once 
had a chance to look at it, and it seemed to 
him as though it were all covered with 
gold and precious stones, while waters clear 
as crystal sparkled, and green fields smiled, 
and glorious trees waved leaf and fruit 
over beautiful people with crowns on their 
heads and dresses white as snow, and the 
strangest, sweetest music fell upon his ear. 



i 



26 Sunday Afternoons. 

You cannot think how happy and how 
good the souls are that get to this won- 
derful place. They never do any thing 
wrong;. Thev know nothing; about trouble. 
To live is a wonderful joy : they could not 
be happier. This is one place to which 
our souls may go when they leave the 
bodies in which they now live. Then there 
is another place, just as unlike this as unlike 
can be. Instead of being the brightest 
and loveliest place that ever was. it is the 
darkest and most frightful. Instead of 
being the happiest and holiest, it is the 
most wretched and wicked. There is 
nothing like it for badness among all bad 
places. It almost makes me faint to speak 
about it, and even to think about it. You 
could not wish anybody any thing worse 
than that he might live forever in such a 
place. O, it is so horrible and wicked ! 

To one or the other of these places all 
our souls must go when they leave their 
bodies. But very likely this answer will 
not satisfy you. It ought not to satisfy 



The Soul 27 

you. Of course you want to know to 
which of these two places — the one so glo- 
rious and the other so dreadful — your 
soul will have to go when you die. Well, 
I can answer this question too, and you 
can make sure it will be a ri^ht answer. 
for I had it from One who knows all about 
such things, and who would not deceive 
me on any account. You ask me to which 
of those two places, the one so bright and 
the other so bad. your soul will go when 
the breath leaves your body. I answer, 
that depends on how you behave while 
the soul is still in your body. Remember 
that aM depends on how you behave while 
the soul is still in your body. If you be- 
have in a certain way, your spirit will 
sorely go to the beautiful land and stay 
there forever. It is what you are doing 
now that will settle where yonr soul will 
go. If you will be sorry for the wrong 
things you have clone, and will pray Jesus, 
the Christian's Saviour, to forgive you, and 
will sincerely set yourself to love and serve 



28 Sunday Afternoons. 

him as long as you live, nothing more 
will be needed. Your precious soul will 
go up straight as a ray of light to Para- 
dise (for that is one of the names of the 
happy country) the moment you breathe 
your last. But if you do not choose to 
do this, and die without having done it — 
whether that be to-morrow or fifty years 
hence — the consequence will be that your 
precious soul will go down straight to that 
dark country of which I have told you, 
never more to come back. So I have an- 
swered your question. 

I said to you that spirit was a far more 
wonderful and important thing than any 
thing you can see, look where you will. 
You see that this is true even of souls — 
true of your soul. There is nothing that 
you have ever seen, or that others ever 
saw, half so grand, so wonderful, so pre- 
cious, as is that unseen, thinking something 
that hides within your young body. It is 
that which does all your planning, feeling 
and choosing for you. It is that which 



The Soul 29 

knows and remembers ; which loves and 
hates, fears and hopes; which does right 
and wrong, and can do either to almost 
any extent ; which feels happiness and 
misery, and can feel either to almost any 
extent ; which, though it has only just be- 
gun to be, will be forever either in a happy 
or wretched place, according as it shall 
choose to act in this world. Said I not 
truly that among things that your eyes 
can see there is nothing that for a moment 
can be thought worth so much as this ? 
Now you see w T hy it is that ministers 
preach and urge so Sabbath after Sabbath : 
it is because the people have souls, pre- 
cious, undying, sinful, endangered souls. 
Now you see why missionaries are sent 
to distant countries: it is because the 
heathen living there have souls — precious, 
undying, sinful, endangered souls. Now 
you see why Sunday-schools are held, and 
so many good books and papers made 
for children. It is because they all have 
souls — precious, undying, endangered souls. 



30 Sunday Afternoons. 

Now you see why it is that your good 
parents and other friends are at times so 
concerned about you, and pray for you so 
earnestly. It is because you have a soul 
within you — a precious, undying, endan- 
gered soul. Now you see why it is that I 
am writing this to you. Surely I should 
not have thought of writing to you at all, 
much less of writing to you about spirits 
and souls, had I not known that in every 
child lives a soul — precious, wonderful, 
endless, and in danger of being endlessly 
miserable and sinful, one which you need 
to think of, and value, and care for more 
than any thing else. 

And now what I want of you is, that 
you take care of this soul of yours that is 
worth so much. If vou do not take care 
of it, there is no use in your taking care 
of any thing else. Suppose a house is on 
fire. It is getting very hot, and all about 
the doors and the windows and the roof 
the flames are bursting out. You wonder 
why the little boy that you know to be in 



The Soul 31 

the house does not come out. You see 
him running by the windows every now 
and then. Why does he not come out ? 
Suppose now you should find out that he 
was looking for pins, and bits of ribbon, 
and other such little things — trying to 
make sure of as many of them as he could 
— what would you think of him ? You 
would say he was a very foolish boy, 
would you not ? What good will his pins 
and ribbons do him if he burns up ? Let 
liiin come out — let him save himself — and 
when he is far from danger he can go 
hunting his little things wherever he 
pleases. So I say to you, before all things 
save your souls. This is the thing to be 
done before play, before work, before 
study, before every thing. If you should 
never get to that " Happy Land " little 
good would any thing do you. But I hope 
you will try to get to it. And if you try, 
and try, and go on trying, you will succeed. 
It is not so hard a thing for those of your 
age to be sorry for their sins and learn to 



32 Sunday Afternoons. 

love and please Christ as it is for those 
who are older. Will you not do it ? This 
will save that soul of yours that is so 
precious. This will make it happy forever 
in that beautiful country to which it will 
go as soon as your body dies. There are 
many bright and beautiful children there. 
No words can tell how they shine and 
sing, with crowns on their heads and harps 
in their hands ! I hope to see them some 
day; and I hope also to see you among 
them, as bright and fair and happy as any. 
What a pity if you should miss such a 
glorious place — you whom the Saviour 
meant when he said so kindly, " Suffer little 
children to come unto me, and forbid them 
not : for of such is the kingdom of God." 

There was once a great king who had 
many beautiful jewels and robes and 
crowns and scepters, and he thought that 
they should not always lie in a dark room 
and be seen by scarcely anybody ; so he 
had them all brought into the center of a 
great building and placed on tables right 



The Soul. 33 

under a great window in the roof, so that 
all his people and people from other lands 
might come and see them. I went with 
many others, and I saw well all those beau- 
tiful and costly things. But I noticed 
that the king was very careful of his treas- 
ures. He plainly did not mean that any 
of them should be stolen or harmed. 
There was a strong iron railing about 
them. There were soldiers to watch and 
keep off the crowd. We could not touch 
any thing. We could only see the splen- 
did show. That was all right. I did not 
blame the king. He did as he should 
have done. It was proper that his care 
of his treasures should be as great as their 
great value. See how you should do ! A 
soul is a far richer and fairer and more 
costly treasure than ever shone in the 
robes and thrones and diadems of kings. 
You should take great care of it. You 
should fence it off from harm as with sol- 
diers and with rails of iron, for if you should 
lose it the loss could never be made good. 



34 Sunday Afternoons. 



II. 

THE ANGELS. 

THERE are things about you besides 
what you can see — things just as real 
as trees and hills and stars. I mean 
spirits. These wonderful beings do all the 
thinking and wishing and willing, all the 
knowing and feeling, all the loving and 
hating, all the hoping and fearing, all the 
right-doing and wrong-doing, that is done 
any where — and yet you never saw them, 
and never can see them with such eyes as 
you now have. 

We know of at least three sorts of spir- 
its — souls, angels, and God. When I last 
met you I spent the time in telling about 
souls — those beings which, hidden in our 
bodies, do all our thinking and wishing 
and willing. I will now tell yon about 
another kind of spirits, namely, angels. 



The Angels. 35 

A long time ago some soldiers were 
standing before a cave. They had "been 
standing there all night to keep the dead 
person who had been laid in it from being 
carried away. Just as morning was com- 
ing — it was Sunday morning that was 
just beginning to touch the hills in the 
east— they suddenly heard a great noise 
and the ground shook under their feet, and 
they saw something like a man come down 
from the sky close to them, with a face 
bright as lightning and dress white as 
snow. They were so frightened, soldiers 
as they were, that they fainted away. But 
some good women who came along had 
better courage, and, though they did not 
dare to speak to so bright a being, they 
heard what he said to them. He told 
them what they came to the place for ; 
that the dead body they expected to find 
was alive again and gone, and that if his 
friends would go to a certain mountain 
they should see him. This was an cmgel, 
or, rather, it was the body which an angel 



36 Sunday Afternoons. 

had put on. As nobody has ever seen a 
soul, only the body in which it lives, so 
nobody has ever seen angels, only the 
bodies which they have worn. But, for all 
that, we know a good deal about them, 
and you should understand that they are 
as rmich grander and brighter than our 
souls as that lightning-body which the 
soldiers saw was grander and brighter 
than such bodies as we have. 

The angels are much more knowing than 
we are. They are a great deal wiser and 
stronger. I do not suppose that a whole 
army of men would be able to stand 
against one of them. Indeed, I happen to 
know that one night a single angel killed 
near two hundred thousand men ; and it 
was done so quietly and easily that those 
sleeping by the side of the slain knew 
nothing of it till the mornino; came. Then 
they awoke and found the camp filled with 
dead. The angels are not obliged to creep 
along the ground as we do. They can fly 
through the sky swifter than any bird, 



The Angefo. 37 

swifter than any cannon-ball, swifter even 
than the swift lightning. We cannot get 
away from the earth if we try ; the most 
we can do is to travel a little on it, and 
now and then go up a few hundred feet in 
a balloon. But the angels can fly away to 
the sun and stars, and can pass from star 
to star almost as quickly as you can think 
of its being done. If you want to go into 
a room you have to open a door or win- 
dow ; if you want to go to the other side 
of a hill you have to go over or around 
it ; but an angel can pass right through 
walls of wood or stone just as if they were 
so much air. 

Did you never read how it happened 
once in the olden time ? Some friends of 
Jesus were together in a room, and the 
doors and windows were all shut and fast- 
ened for fear of the Jews. All at once 
Jesus stood in the midst of them. How 
did he get in ? No door had opened, nor 
window. Could you have looked at the 
bolts and bars you would have found them 



38 Sunday Afternoons. 

quite untouched. Yet there he was. This 
shows you how easily angels may go any- 
where among us, and that not even the 
thickest prison walls can shut in or out 
these wonderful spirits. 

The angels are very old. Long ago, 
when the world was young, men them- 
selves lived almost a thousand years — trees 
are now standing which must have stood 
more than three times that great time — 
and O how long, long a time that does 
seem to you, stretching out and out as if 
it would never end ! But I have no idea 
this is any thing like as long as the angels 
have lived. I cannot say exactly how old 
they are, but I think that the youngest of 
them is older than the world — counting 
from the time when men began to live on 
it. Six thousand years, at least, have the 
angels lived — it may be six hundred thou- 
sand — and, what is even more wonderful, 
they show no sign of being old at all. 
They are just as fresh and strong as they 
ever were. They were never so wise, so 



The Angels. 39 

active, so mighty as they are at this mo- 
ment. They are actually getting stronger 
and stronger every day, instead of weaker 
and weaker. " Is this so ? M you say ; 
44 then very likely they will never die. 
This growing stronger for six thousand 
years and more does not look like dying." 
You are right. The angels will live always 
— life-time after life-time, century after cen- 
tury, world-life after world-life, I had 
almost said eternity after eternity. 

Are they very many, these angels ? O 
yes, wonderfully many ! There is no 
counting them, they are so many. Not 
long ago we were every day hearing of 
our great armies at Washington and else- 
where, all ready to fight for and against 
their country. Could you have seen them 
you would have said, " What a sight of 
people ! n And then almost every country 
in Europe has armies nearly as large as 
we once had. But put theirs and ours to- 
gether and they would not equal the 
mighty armies of the angels. Sure I am 



40 Sukday Afternoons. 

they are many times more than all the 
people of the world. They are like the 
leaves on the trees or the sands on the 
sea-shore. Did you never hear of a little 
boy whom his father took one day to the 
beach to gather the yellow shells and play 
in the soft white sand — and how the child 
took up a handful of the sand and tried 
to count all the little grains — and how 
he soon became quite discouraged and 
gave tip the counting, and said, " Father, 
there is no end of them ! w Suppose he 
had tried to count all the sands on all the 
sea-shores of the world ! As well might 
one try to count the angels. 

There are two sorts of angels, living; in 
two very different places. One sort are 
perfectly good beings, and these live in 
Heaven, that beautiful place to which 
good men go when they die. The other 
sort are very bad beings, and these live in 
Hell, that dreadful place to which bad men 
go at last. Once there was only one kind 
of angels. They were all good and all 



The Angels. 41 

lived in Heaven. But a great many of 
them in some way became wicked, and 
after that they were cast out of their glo- 
rious home and were obliged to go and 
live in a place as bad as themselves. And 
that is very bad. Neither bad nor good 
angels are bad or good like men. The 
good are perfectly good and the bad are 
well-nigh perfectly bad — the one sort white 
as the whitest snow, the others black as 
ink. And so the place where the good 
angels live is the brightest and most beau- 
tiful that ever was known, and the place 
where the others live is the dreariest and 
worst — nothing like it anywhere. But 
you must not think that the angels stay in 
these places all the while. These places 
are only their homes. They go and come, 
just as men do. A man leaves his house 
and is gone all clay — perhaps a good many 
clays — and yet people call it his home, and 
say that is where he lives. Perhaps he goes 
a great distance — say to New York or 
Washington — perhaps he travels about on 



42 Sunday Afternoons. 

the other side of the ocean for a whole 
year, and yet people say this is his home, 
this is where he lives. In the same way 
we say that Heaven is the home of the 
good angels, and Hell the home of the 
bad, though none of them stay in these 
homes all the while, but, on the contrary, 

7 7 «/ 7 

fly about and go away to very distant 
places, and stay away for a long time. I 
have no doubt that both kinds of them 
come as far as us, and make a long tarry 
too — especially the bad angels, because our 
world is so much pleasanter than theirs ; 
but still Heaven is the place to which the 
good angels belong, and Hell is the place 
to which belong the bad angels. 

The angels are not all equally great and 
strong and wise and high. It is with 
them as it is with men. Some men are 
strong, and some are very weak. Some 
know much, and some very little. Some 
are beautiful, and some are very homely. 
Some are private soldiers, some captains, 
some generals, and some kings and empe- 



The Angels. 43 

rors. They differ among themselves as 
much as do the lakes and the mountains. 
We have three small lakes in our own 
small town, but these would be almost 
nothing by the side of some of our great 
western lakes stretching; through hundreds 
of miles. We have our large hills, and 
any day you can see Mount Archer look- 
ing down pleasantly on them, as a father 
does on his children ; but what would the 
highest of these be by the side of the 
Rocky Mountains and the Alps, their heads 
white with everlasting snows? There is 
just as much difference among the angels 
in greatness and glory as there is among 
mountains or lakes or men. Michael is a 
leader and prince among the good angels, 
Satan is the leader and prince among the 
bad angels. And there was a time, now 
long ago, when these two great spirits, 
each with an army of lesser spirits under 
him, fought against each other on the 
plains of Heaven. Satan was conquered, 
and he and his fell from Heaven as some 



44 Sunday Afteknoons. 

of you have seen the shooting-stars fall in 
November — only much more thickly. The 
sky was all ablaze with them. 

In this country people often change 
their homes. *A man sells out. He gets 
together all that he cares about, and puts 
it on a cart or in a boat, and goes away 
into another place to live. Still, some per- 
sons spend their whole lives in one place. 
The houses they were born in are the 
houses they live and die in. In England, 
the country from which our fathers came, 
it is no uncommon thing to find families 
which have been living on the same lands 
and in the same dwellings time out of 
mind — fathers, grandfathers, great-grand- 
fathers, and away back for hundreds of 
years. They have never moved. They 
are proud of it, and hope they will never 
have any other homes while the world 
stands. It is not very likely they will 
have their wish, this is such a changing 
world. But I can tell you of some beings 
who never, never change their homes. I 



The Angels. 45 

mean the angels. It is true that the bad 
angels made a change some thousands of 
years ago, (and a very dreadful change it 
was,) but there will be no more changes. 
They will never have any other home than 
the dreary, dreadful one they have had 
ever since. And the angels who kept 
their goodness will never have any other 
than the bright, glorious home they have 
always had. No ? from this time forward 
none of these spirits will ever change their 
home; and the reason is, that none of 
them will ever change their character. 
Bad men often become very good men — 
bad children often become very good chil- 
dren. Your parents and teachers are hop- 
ing that those of you who have evil, wicked 
hearts will one day come to have good 
hearts instead of the bad. Such things 
are happening every day, especially among 
the children who go to the Sunday-school. 
I have read of a boy so bad that he had 
to be sent to prison. He would swear and 
lie and steal, and when a kind man tried 



46 Sunday Afternoons. 

to "help him and teach him better things 
he had no gratitude, but tried to steal from 
that best friend. But that friend would 
not give up the poor wicked boy, and 
after awhile, though he was so wicked at 
first, he came to be good. People hardly 
knew him, the change was so great. It 
was like the change sometimes made in 
an old house. The carpenter repairs, takes 
away, adds, and at last you hardly know 
the building. It is as good as new. On 
some accounts it is better than a new 
house could be. Such was the change in 
that little boy. lie was quite another 
child, much to the wonder of all who 
knew him. And all of you can be 
changed from bad to good in the same 
way. But such a thing will never happen 
to the bad angels. They will always stay 
bad, and the good angels will always stay 
good. A change there will be, but not 
of this kind. The good angels will get 
stronger and stronger in their goodness 
every day, while the bad angels will be 



The Angels. 47 

getting worse and worse. And so it will 
be that none of them will ever change 
their home. If it is Heaven, there they 
will stay forever. If it is that other w r orld, 
which it is so hard to name because it is 
so dreadful, there they will stay forever. 
Each in the place suited to his character. 

But now, perhaps, some of you are 
thinking something like this, " What have 
we to do with these angels ? What use 
in our hearing so much about them, if they 
do not live in this world ? " Let me tell 
you, by bringing back to your minds what 
I have already told you. The two worlds 
where these angels live are the places to 
which when we die all of us must go. 
We must have, by and by, one or the 
other sort of angels for company, and 
have them for company always. And 
there is another thing to be thought of. 
Though the homes of the angels are in 
the two distant worlds I have spoken of, 
yet these spirits are by no means shut up 
in them, but spend much of their time in 



48 Sunday Aftebnoons. 

this world right among us. Good angels 
and bad — they are flying about us all the 
while. They are in the fields where men 
are at work, in the stores where men buy 
and sell, in the boats where men are fish- 
ing, along the roads where men are walk- 
ing and riding, in the houses where fami- 
lies sit together, even in the churches 
where we come to learn and do holy 
things. They are at our ears, our eyes, 
our tongues, our hands, our hearts. They 
put good and bad thoughts into our 
minds ; they try to get us to do this and 
to do that ; they help us and they hinder 
us ; they fight for us and they fight against 
us. The holy angels try to do us all the 
good they can — the wicked angels try to 
do us all the hurt they can. The good 
spirits want to have us good like them- 
selves, and do all they can to make us so : 
the bad spirits want to have us bad like 
themselves, and do all they can to make us 
so. And they do not forget the children, 
down to the youngest. I suppose they 



The Angels. 49 

are just as busy at the ears and in the 
heart of a child of six years as of a man 
of sixty — the good pulling him upward, 
and the bad pulling him downward. Xone 
of them can make even the smallest child 
do as they please : all they can do is to 
tempt him, to persuade him. If he has a 
mind to refuse them he can do so, and can 
drive them quite away from him. All he 
has to do is to say no to them, and to keep 
saying it, and they will leave him, whether 
they are good angels or evil ones. And 
if he wants to keep them let him say yes 
to them, and Jceep saying it, and they will 
stay by him without fail. 

So you must never think yourselves 
alone. When your fathers and mothers 
and playmates are out of sight, and on 
looking about you every-where, above and 
below and around, not a sign of a person 
can be seen, then remember that there are 
many beings besides those which the eye 
can see. For augvht vou can know the air 
about you may be all alive with people — 

4 



50 Sunday Afternoons. 

people whom you cannot see, but who can 
see you and hear you and know all you 
are doing. It may be as if you were in a 
city when you seem most alone. Do not 
forget that the world is full of angels, bad 
and good, and that at no moment can you 
be sure that thousands of them are not 
watching every thing you do. 

There was once a good man whom a 
certain king wished to take prisoner. So 
this king sent a great army to the city 
where the man was. And when his serv- 
ant looked over the wall and saw so many 
waving banners and glittering spears he 
was much afraid. It seemed as if nothing 
could save him. Then his master asked 
God to open his eyes. All at once, in- 
stead of finding himself all alone amid a 
host of enemies, he saw the sky about him 
filled with protecting angels. Of course 
he was not afraid any more. When he 
thought himself all alone there were thou- 
sands and thousands of angels about him. 
So it may be with you. 



The Angels. 51 

Besides, do not forget that there is a 
great straggle going on between the two 
kinds of angels as to which shall have you 
with them. 'The good angels want you, 
and the bad angels want you. The one 
want to have you wise and holy, and to 
take you up with them to the beautiful 
world where they most delightfully live; 
the others want to make you foolish and 
wicked, and to take you down with them 
to that wicked world where they are to 
live forever in shame and punishment. 
And so they are struggling and pulling 
you different ways. The reason you do 
not feel it is that the pulling is on your 
hearts and icills, and not on your bodies. 
They are trying to persuade you — trying 
about as hard as they can — to have you 
be their friends and go with them where 
they will always live. And you must 
think what you will do — must choose on 
which side you will be. On which side 
shall we find you I 

Would you not rather have the good 



52 Suxday Afterxooxs. 

angels for friends — those bright, beautiftd 
beings who love you so much ? To tell 
the truth the bad angels do not love you 
at all. They do not love anybody. All 
they want is to deceive you, and. hurt you, 
and make you wretched forever. They 
will be as glad as such wicked beings can 
be to make you as wicked as themselves 
and drag you clown to that black world 
where they belong, and there torment 
you *xs badly as can be without end — 
they hate you so much. But the good 
angels love you as much as the bad ones 
hate you. If they can only get you to be 
on their side and to do as they do — to be 
good like themselves, and go with them to 
their golden homes in the sky — it will 
make them very happy. 

How your parents' faces will sometimes 
shine upon you with love and joy when they 
see you doing well, and feel encouraged to 
think that you will grow up to be a comfort 
and honor to them ! You would at such 
times see much brighter faces than those of 



The Angels. 53 

father and mother shining joyfully upon 
vou, if you could then see the good angels 

which are all about you. The sky is all 
in a glory with their glad and thankful 
looks — they love you so much. 

Xow which angels would you rather live 
with always \ AVhat place would you rather 
live in always — the brightest and fairest 
and happiest world that ever was known, 
or the blackest and wretcheclest ? I know 
what you would say, "We want to go to 
the Happy Land, Every one of us wants 
to find his home at last with those bright 
angels, brighter than summer or the stars, 
and who are as loving as they are bright." 
But, that you may do this, you must 
begin now to le like the good angels. 
While you are in this world you must 
learn to be good like them — you must 
learn to love right-doing and to hate 
wrong-doing, just as they do. It is not 
easy for you to do this. You have evil 
hearts which help the bad spirits to lead 
you in evil ways. But you can get the 



54 Sunday Afternoons. 

better of them if you try hard. There is 
a great Spirit, far greater than they, 
stronger and wiser than all of them to- 
gether, who will help you against them if 
you will ask Him. There is a great Sav- 
iour who loves children and is mightier 
than all the evil angels and your evil 
hearts put together, and who will save 
you from them if you will ask him. I 
hope to tell you more about these great 
helpers soon ; but you know something 
about them already, and when you feel it 
hard to be good you must not forget to 
ask them to help you. Ask them to take 
away your evil hearts. Ask them to take 
your part against the bad angels and Sa- 
tan their king. In this way you will 
drive those evil ones away from you, and 
the bright, good angels will most gladly 
take you for their own, and watch over 
you day and night, and help you to be 
better and better ; and by and by, when 
you die, they will gather about you in a 
golden cloud and carry you up with joy- 



The Angels. 55 

ful songs to your home in heaven. And 
such a home ! I have seen many places 
which I thought very beautiful. I have 
seen pictures of places which I thought 
more beautiful still, and I can shut my 
eyes and build up in my thoughts glorious 
palaces and cities and countries far richer 
and fairer than I ever saw in the finest 
paintings ; but even these thought-pictures, 
when we have done our best to make them 
lovely, give but a very poor idea of that 
glorious land to which you and I may go 
if we will. 



56 Sujstday ArTEEisrooisrs. 



III. 

GOD. 

I SHALL speak to you next about the 
greatest Being ever known — about 
GOD. This is one of his names, the 
name we most hear ; but he has many 
other names, such as Lord, Jehovah, Crea- 
tor, Almighty. 

I hope you will remember how I have 
come to speak to you of this great Being. 
I first told you of two sorts of things — 
the things that can be seen, and the things 
that cannot be seen with such eyes as we 
have. People sometimes call these two 
sorts of things matter and spirit. I did 
not say much to you about matter — about 
the trees, the flowers, the fields, the rivers, 
the mountains, the stars, although these 
are very curious and beautiful things — be- 
cause they are not so beautiful and im- 



God. 57 

portant as the other sort of things. So I 
went on to tell you about spirits. I said 
we knew at least three kinds of spirits — 
souls, angels, and God. Souls I told you 
about when we first met. At our next 
meeting I told you about angels. And 
now I will tell you of the greatest spirit 
of all, namely, GOD — the Being we pray 
to, the Being we speak of so often in 
the Church, the Being whose great name 
wicked people sometimes take in vain. 

You must not think that I will try to 
tell you every thing about God. I could 
not do it if I wished, for I do not myself 
know every thing about him. Indeed, I 
know very little about him compared with 
what there is to be known — He is so great 
a being. But the little I do know is very 
important, and I will tell it to you just as 
a father brings home to his children a few 
grains of sand from the great sea-shore 
that winds all around the world. 

God is like us in some things. Like us, 
he thinks, feels, chooses; and, like our 



58 Sunday Aftekjstoons. 

souls, he cannot be seen with our coarse 
eyes. But there are many things in which 
he is very different from our spirits. He 
has no one body in which he lives. No 
voice of his goes ringing daily, and almost 
every moment, through the air as our 
voices do. Our houses are sounding with 
words from morning to night ; the streets 
and fields echo with calls and shouts and 
talks ; but these are human voices only. 
Never once have we heard God's voice 
among them. We turn our ear upward, 
and then downward ; we set it toward 
every part of the sky ; we listen with all 
our might for something that seems like 
the voice of God. But we hear nothing 
but the whispering breeze, the humming 
insects, and the talking or shouting men. 
He speaks no words that we can hear. 
God is always silent among us. Years 
come and go, life-times pass away, and it 
is all the same — the same unbroken still- 
ness. You never heard God say any 
thing ; your fathers will tell you that they 



God. 59 

never have heard the tones of his voice ; 
your forefathers for hundreds of years will 
say as much. He lias been known to 
speak on the earth ; but the last time of 
his doing it, so far as we know, was more 
than eighteen hundred years ago. Then 
his voice fell from the sky, and some men 
said that it thundered. But now he is 
always silent. 

Very different from us, also, is God in 
another thing. He can see and do things 
any distance away just as well as he can 
nigh. Your souls come and look out at 
your eyes, and see the things that are very 
near you quite plainly ; but as soon as you 
begin to look a little way off every thing 
gets dim, and a little farther away you can 
see nothing at all. Your souls take hold 
of your hands and work easily on things 
your hands can reach, but on things miles 
away they cannot act at all. They have 
to send messengers. They hava to shoot 
with the cannon. They have to stretch 
the telegraph wires. That is to say, they 



60 SUKDAY AfTEBROORS. 

have to make & connection in some way with 
the thing to be acted on. But it is not so 
with God. He can see things equally well 
a thousand inches and a thousand miles 
away — equally well where he is, and great 
star-distances away where he is not. He 
can work on the most far-away things just 
as well as he can on the nearest — just as 
easily and quickly at the sun, or places in- 
finitely farther off, as he can just here 
where he happens to be. Distance makes 
no difference with his seeing or his doing. 
A thousand millions of miles counts no 
more than a foot. It is all the same as if 
he were everv-where at once. 

It takes some time for the arrow, though 
shot from a strong bow strongly pulled, to 
reach its mark. It takes time for even the 
sun to shoot its swift rays to us. Bat 
God can shoot his sight or his power to 
the end of the universe in no time at all. 
Before we can think it is there. As soon 
as it starts it reaches the end of its 
journey. 



God, 61 

Very much like this is another wonder- 
ful thing which you oug;ht to think of. 

O- i/O 

God is always seeing and doing. Much 
of the time we keep our eyes shut and 
see nothing at all. Much of the time we 
are tired and can do nothing. But God 
never sleeps, is never tired. There is "no 
such thing as night to him. He keeps 
seeing and seeing, doing and doing, day 
and night, summer and winter, all the 
same. 

No doubt it is hard for you to under- 
stand how all this can he, it is so unlike 
what you can do. And yet it is not un- 
like what your heart can dp. How it 
goes on beating all the while, dav and 
nio;ht, without ever resting or needing to 

O " O o- 

rest a single moment. Yonder is a roan 
ei^htv years old, and Tet his heart has 
not once stopped beating since the day he 
was born, and it is not tired yet. God is 
like that heart ; or rather, he is like the 
bright sun and stars that keep always 
moving and shining — never once stopping 



62 Sunday Afternoons. 

through all the ages, and yet as bright 
and fresh now as they were when men first 
saw them. Think of God as a great eye 
that is never tired of seeing. Think of 
him as a great hand that is never tired of 
working. 

Another thing about God. He is per- 
fectly happy. Men sometimes say that 
they are perfectly happy, but they do not 
mean what they say. There is always 
some drawback to their enjoyment, some 
bitter to their sweet, some sharp stones or 
thorns on the road they are traveling. 
And, taking months and years together, 
we all have something worse to speak of 
than enjoyments not quite so large and 
solid as they might be. We have pains, 
sorrows, sometimes miseries. But God is 
always as happy as he can be. Tis not 
with him as it is with us, now content and 
now discontented, now happy and now 
wretched — it. is perfect bliss all the while. 
You have seen the sun when it had not a 
single spot or speck of cloud on its bright 



God. 63 

face. You have seen a spring of beauti- 
fully clear water, not merely half or quar- 
ter full but running over at the brim. 
You have seen our Connecticut not merely 
covering its bed, so that you could see no 
rocks nor patches of sand, but overflowing 
all its banks, so that all the low meadows 
around were covered. Well, such is the 
happiness of God — an unspotted sun, a 
full spring, an overflowing river. 

The next thing I shall speak of is often 
thought very hard to be understood ; but 
it is too important to be left out in telling 
about God. God is three. God is Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son is he who 
was in Jesus Christ when he lived on the 
earth many centuries ago. The Holy Spirit 
is he who makes bad men good and good 
men better, especially in what you have 
heard called revivals of religion. Some- 
times a great many persons in a place 
break off their sins and bad characters at 
the same time, and the Holy Spirit in their 
hearts is what persuades them to do it. 



64 SUOT)AY AFTERlTOOlSrS. 

And the Father is he who sent the Son 
and sends the Holy Spirit. These three 
are all joined to each other in some way 
that we know nothing about, so as to make 
but one being, but one God. You must 
not think there are three Gods. This 
would be a very wrong and dangerous 
thought. There is but one God : onlv this 
one is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as 
closely joined together as are your three 
powers of thinking, feeling, and choosing. 
These three powers are not the same, but 
they are all equally great and honorable, 
and all belong to one soul. So the Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit are not the same, but 
they are equally great and honorable, and 
together make one God. 

A few years ago and there were no such 
things as your souls. They have but just 
begun to be. But there never was a time 
when there was no God. Go back in your 
thoughts as far as you can — go back hun- 
dreds of thousands of millions of years — 
and God was living then. Go back as 



God. 65 

many times this great number of years as 
there are specks of dust in the whole great 
world we live on — God was living then. 
He has always lived. He never had a be- 
ginning. What a thing to think of — 
never a beginning, never a beginning ! 
You must try to get hold of this thought 
so as to feel how great a difference there is 
between God and us, who were just noth- 
ings onlv a few years ago. A being who 

CD * J CD CD 

never began cannot but be. Xothing can 

CD CD 

destroy him. He will go on living forever 
and forever, and it will be because it will 
not be possible for him to stop living. 
Our souls, now that they have begun to 
live, will always keep on living, (in this 
respect they are like God,) but it will not 
be because they cannot be made to die. 
A plenty of power, such as I shall speak 
of soon, could strike them out of being in 
a moment more easily than you can lift a 
finger. Gocl has only to say in his heart, 
Let them become nothings, and, quick as 
a flash, our places would be empty. One 



66 Sunday Afternoons. 

could never find us again, though he should 
go hunting through all the worlds. That 
word would be the last of us — quite 
blotted out. But God cannot die. He is 
such a being that he could no more be 
made to die than two and two could be 
made to be five. All the power in the 
world or out of it, all the power you can 
think of, cannot do such an impossible 
thino\ 

AY hen we began God made us. He 
made us, and all things that we see, and 
all things that are. Himself is the only 
thing he did not make. All the fields and 
waters and skies, all the plants and ani- 
mals and men, ail the dust itself which 
they are made of, all the souls of men, all 
the angels, all the matter and spirit that 
have been, are, or shall be — you must look 
to him as the Maker of all. AVhat is of 
most consequence to be remembered is 
that he made m#, bodies and souls — not 
merely put us together, as a carpenter does 
a house, but made the very materials which 



God. 67 

he put together. Of course no man can 
do an v thins; like this. He cannot make the 
smallest bit of dust. He can make tools, 
machines, houses, that are really quite won- 
derful ; but then he must have something 
to make his watches and locomotives and 
palaces out of. Who ever heard of a man 
making something out of nothing ! This 
is what only God can do. Of course you 
cannot understand how he does it. No- 
body understands this. But a great many 
things are true which we cannot explain, 
and this anions; others — that God made us 
and all other things out of just nothing. 
Hence he owns us and all things. No 
man has a right to think that he owns an- 
other man ; no man has a right to think 
that he owns himself. God is the only 
owner of a man. He can fairly claim us 
and all that we call ours. If a man has 
a house to live in God made the carpenter 
that built it, the iron of the tools it was 
built with, and the wood it was built of. 
If a man has a farm or cattle or money, 



68 Sunday Ajternoons, 

Grocl made those acres, even to the smallest 
atom of dust that is in them. He made 
the cattle and the grass that keeps them 
alive. He made the gold and silver deep 
in the mines, together with the fires that 
melted them and the hands that coined 
them. So we are his, aud ours are his. 
The grown-up people and all they call 
theirs — they are his. The children and 
all they call theirs — they are his. 

You have heard of great kin^s liviuo; 
gloriously in their palaces. Golden crowns 
are on their heads. Golden scepters are 
in their hands. They sit on thrones and 
wear robes that blaze with gold and pre- 
cious stones. But the great thing is that 
such men are very powerful and can do 
almost anv thing they choose with the 
people under them. Others look up to 
them with great admiration and say, May 
it please your majesties. Yet the greatest 
of these kings is not so great a kino; as 
God. They who know him best call him 
" King of kings," because he rules over all 



God. 69 

the Kings of the world as well as over all 

other people, Heaven, where good angels 
live and where good men go when they 
die, is his glorious palace. There he 
reigns in glory over armies and armies be- 
yond our counting — hosts whose greatest 
delight it is to have him reign over them. 
He reigns over all other worlds too — over 
all the stars yon see in the shy as well as 
over the world on which we live. He 
gives laws to every thing about us. He 
tells us what we are to do. and he tells 
the stones, the trees, the winds, the waters, 
the lightnings, what they are to do. He 
has his shining servants who come and go 
at his bidding. He has his glittering ar- 
mies that march and that fly. He has his 
court and his distant provinces. He has 
his rewards and punishments, his sword 
of justice and scepter of mercy. A great 
king is God. dwelling gloriously in heaven, 
his palace. Never such a king ! 

But it will not be of much use for us to 
remember that God is a great king unless 



70 Sunday Afternoons. 

we remember certain other things. One 
of them is this : From his glorious throne 
and palace in the sky God looks down and 
away and sees all that happens, day and 
night, in this world — all the great things 
and all the small things, all things done 
under the blaze of day and all things done 
under the blackness of night, all things 
that happen outside of a man and all 
things that happen inside of him. Noth- 
ing escapes the eye of God — not even the 
thoughts and feelings hidden deep within 
you and never yet put into words or even 
looks. Not a wish have you but God 
knows it as soon as you do. Are you 
about making up your minds to do some- 
thing good or bad — God watches all your 
plans and motives as they by little and 
little take shape in you, and knows much 
more about them than you yourselves do. 
All your hopes and fears, all your pains 
and pleasures, all your works and plays, 
the smallest as well as the greatest of them, 
are at once plain as day to him. Take 



God. 71 

you never so rnuch pains to be secret, he 
lias already found you out. Get on as 
well as you may in hiding things from the 
prying eyes of parents and teachers, there 
is One from whom you cannot hide the 
smallest thing, no, not for one moment after 
it has come to be. Do not think that be- 
cause heaven is so far away God cannot 
see you — his eye makes no account of dis- 
tance. Do not think that because you are 
so small and your matters so small, God 
does not notice you and yours— his eye 
finds out the smallest things as well as the 
greatest. When a man wants to see some- 
thing very far away he has to get what is 
called a telescope to help him, and even 
then he cannot see most of the things hid- 
den in the distance. When a man wants 
to see something very small he has to put 
his eye to what is called a microscope, and 
even then, let him do his best, he can- 
not see but a small part of small things. 
But God needs no telescope to see far- 
off things, and all of them. He needs 



72 Sunday Afterxooxs. 

bo microscope to see small things, and 
all of them. His eye out-travels all our 
glasses, and, though it be at the very ends 
of the universe, finds out every secret 
thing 

God not only sees ail that is passing 
every-where, but he can, without moving 
from his place in heaven, do with you and 
me and all things just as he pleases. Sup- 
pose he wants to make us great or small, 
sick or well, wise or foolish, unknown or 
famous, happy or miserable, he can do it 
in an instant. Suppose he wants to strike 
ns into nothing or into the place where 
wicked angels are, he can do it in an in- 
stant. He has nothing; to do but to will 
it. No strength nor cunning can prevent 
what he wills from coming to pass. You 
know that when roe will to have any thing 
done that is very far from settling the 
matter. We have to follow up our willing 
with working, and, if we have to act at a 
distance, with traveling, and even then we 
are by no means sure of gaining our ob- 



God 73 

ject. But, with God, to will and to do 
are the same thing. Just as soon as he 
decides that a thing shall at once be. at 
once it is. The willing begins and ends 
the whole matter. Should we try to re- 
sist him that would make no difference. 
Should all the world come to our help, and 
all the angels besides, it would make no 
difference. God's will and power, from 
away where he sits throned in the sky, 
would conquer us in an instant. Gocl is 

AL3IIGHTY. 

Yet for all that God is so strong, able 
to do in an instant just what he pleases, 
able to do all things, he never does any 
thing wrong. This is a beautiful fact — 
the other was a grand one. Both beauti- 
ful and grand is it to know that God never 
makes a bad use of his wonderful power, 
that no foolish nor bad thing is ever clone 
by him. We need not fear his treating us 
worse than we deserve through either mis- 
take or cruelty. This is very comforting. 
It is beautiful to see at least one being the 



74 Sunday Afternoons. 

white robes of whose life have no spot 
upon them. 

Never doing any thing wrong himself, 
he does not like to have others do wrong. 
He is displeased with us when we do so. 
Seeing all you do, whether done by day or 
night, whether without your body or 
within your soul, if he sees you doing what 
you ought not, be sure he is offended at 
you. And if you keep on doing badly he 
will not stop at being offended. He will 
go on to punish you. And he can go very 
far in the way of punishing. If we will 
not be persuaded to cease doing evil and 
to learn doing well, he will at last shut us 
in with those wicked angels, of whom I 
have told you, in their dreadful world. 
Above all things let us be careful not to 
come to this. Better to have any thing 
else happen to us ! 

Though God is so displeased, and at last 
so stern, with those who do wickedty, you 
must not suppose that he is a harsh and 
cruel being. This would be doing him 



God. 75 

great injustice, for really he is the most 
patient and loving of beings. Your 
fathers and mothers, however much they 
may love you, have no heart at all com- 
pared with God. Though we are great 
sinners against him, he is giving; us all the 
while millions on. millions of good things, 
in fact all the fair and pleasant things we 
have, to make us comfortable and happy 
in this world. He has sent us a Book from 
heaven to tell us how to be good and 
happy forever. He has come himself to 
shed his own blood and life to take away 
our sins, if we will be sorry for them. 
Every day he sends the Holy Spirit to try 
to make us good, and does not give it up 
though the treatment he gets is very far 
from what it should be. By every means 
he is trying to take you and us all to live 
with him forever in the glorious heaven 
where he reigns. This is what he would 
love to do. His heart is in this. He threat- 
ens and punishes only because he must do 
so to keep wickedness from filling the world. 



76 Sujsday Afterxoo^s. . 

This is the great and good Being to 
whom we pray. This is he whom we wor- 
ship and preach about in the churches. 
This is he of whom your teachers in the 
Sunday-school, and I hope your parents at 
home, tell you. It is the same being you 
read of in the Bible and many other good 
books, and whom good people every-where 
worship and love and fear and obey. And, 
do you know, I should never have thought 
of preaching to you about God had I not 
wanted to persuade you to fear and love 
and serve him also. Such a great and 
good being — one who never himself began 
to be, but from whom all other things be- 
gan — one who sits in heaven as a glorious 
king, and from thence sees all that hap- 
pens and all that you do, and is so strong 
and knowing that he can, without stirring 
from his place, do with you and all things 
just as he pleases — one who never does 
wrons; himself and does not like to have 
others do it — who is patient and loving 
and pitiful beyond measure, and tries ever 



God. 77 

to make us fit for heaven and then take 
us there — this is a being none of us can 
afford to displease, and whom it ought to 
be easy for us to love and serve. It is 
easy for you to do it, now that you are 
young — easy compared with what it will 
be by and by. By and by it will be very 
hard. Now is the time to make the great 
God your friend and father. I hope you 
will not fail to do it, and will grow up 
not like many who forget him and break 
his holy laws and become miserable for- 
ever, but to love him as j^our best friend 
and try to do all things that please him, 
and so at last go to live with him in glory 
everlasting in heaven. 

I saw two little boys. They lived in 
the same place, were of nearly the same 
age, dressed much alike, and played to- 
gether. One day they both stood where 
two ways met, and one said, I will go this 
way, and the other said, I w T ill take the 
other. So they parted. For a w T hile they 
were so near each other that they could 



78 Sunday Afternoons. 

talk together, but soon they went too far 
apart for this, and then they lost sight of 
each other. But I could see them still, 
and I saw that the path on which one boy 
was going kept creeping up, and was all 
the while getting brighter and pleasanter, 
while that on which the other was going 
kept creeping down, and was all the while 
getting darker and drearier. At last it 
grew hard to see, so I took a spy-glass 
and kept on watching. And at last I saw 
him on the rising path get up so high and 
become so bright that he seemed almost 
like a star, and then I saw him go in at the 
gates of a beautiful city. Then I turned to 
watch the other boy, and I watched him 
going down till at last he seemed at the 
bottom of a deep pit, and his clothes were 
all rags, and his face looked so wicked and 
O so sad ! so sad it made my heart ache. 
Then came a flash where he stood. I never 
saw him again. And this was the child 
who took to sinful ways. The other set out 
to love and serve God, and God took him. 



The Empire of God. 79 



IV. 

THE EMPIRE OF GOD. 

AN empire is a large region ruled over 
by a king or emperor, 

Sometimes an empire is very large, 
including many countries that stretch along 
for thousands of miles. Such is the Eus- 
sian empire. One almost gets tired at the 
mere idea of traveling about such immense 
coasts, across such immense plains and 
mountains and seas, over so many mill- 
ions on millions of square miles of land 
and water as belong to this very large 
empire. 

But I am now to tell about an empire 
still larger than this, and far larger than 
any other the world ever saw. It is that 
great territory over which God rules as 
king. No other realm like this. The sun 
never shone on one so broad and grand. 



80 SlJKDAY AFTEE NOONS. 

By the side of it all other empires that we 
see or read of, if put together, would be 
of no account. 

For see. All other empires are only 
parts of this. All our world belongs to it. 
All the American countries, north and 
south — all the countries of the Old World 
away to the sunrising — all the islands, 
great and small, that dot the ocean for 
twenty-four thousand miles— all the oceans 
themselves, that no nations pretend to 
own — all belong to this one great empire 
of God. Republics, monarchies, deserts — 
called by this name and by that, claimed 
by this nation and by that, inhabited or 
uninhabited — heathen lands that know not 
God as well as those lands where he is 
worshiped and served — they all belong 
to this heavenly empire. What a great 
empire it is ! 

But great as is the empire which all the 
countries and seas of the world make, they 
are but a small part of the empire over 
which God reigns. Look up at the sky 



The Umpire of God. 81 

some bright night. You see it all sown 
with stars. If you could go toward almost 
any one of these stars, swift as the light- 
ning, for thousands of years, you would 
on coming to it find it a much larger world 
than this on which we live. We can see 
some twenty millions of such worlds in a 
fair night, and each of them has about it 
a family of many other worlds which we 
cannot see at all. And there is not one of 
them which, if we should go to it and 
question it, would fail to confess that it 
belongs to God. He is its king. He 
owns and rules it. It is one of the many 
countries of his empire. 

Is this the end ? Have we found the 
last countries ruled over by God ? If we 
go farther shall we come to the territory 
of another king — come to other worlds 
which God does not own or to no territo- 
ries at all ? Do not think it. Could you 
stand on tbe most distant world that we 
can see, you would see just as many and 
distant worlds beyond you as you do now ; 



82 Sunday Afternoons. 

and if from that point you should travel 
on again as far as to the last twinkling 
star it would be all the same ; and so on 
forever, for aught I know. Wherever you 
found a world you would find it belonging 
to the empire of God. And should you 
ever come to an end of worlds you would 
never come to the end of that great sky 
in which the worlds are moving about like 
floating islands in a shoreless ocean. And 
this shoreless sky itself belongs to God. 
Empty space is as much his as are the 
solid worlds. No part of it which he 
does not own and rule. He sees it. His 
power is there. At any time he chooses 
he can make it shine with matter and 
swarm with life. 

Of course you will feel that this is a 
wonderfully great empire. What line 
could go around it ? What ship could sail 
across it ? What map could give all its 
provinces, far and near ? What lightning 
on its fiery path could ever come in sight 
of the end ? No boundaries, no neighbors, 



The Empire of God. 8 



D 



nothing beyond it — the sum total of all 
things — behold the empire of God ! 

And about as populous with living 
beings as it is vast. The air, the seas, the 
lands of our world, are alive with animals 
of almost innumerable forms. What mul- 
titudes of men now living ! What hosts 
of men who did live on the earth, and 
whose souls when they went away went 
somewhere, and are living to-day some- 
where in the empire of God as truly as 
they ever did ! And then think of the 
many, many beings there must be in the 
untold millions of other worlds that we 
know of! I should be sorry to be put at 
counting them. I would sooner undertake 
to count all the leaves on the trees and all 
the sands on the shores. Yes, I would 
rather try to do this than to reckon up all 
the spirits even that are to be found in 
all tliQ stretches of space. The population 
of India or China astonishes us — that of 
God's whole empire would confound us 
and take our breath awav. Nations mini- 



84 Sunday Afternoons. 

berless, races on races without end, mighty 
populations added to mighty populations, 
till our strongest thought staggers and 
falls under the burden ! Once in ten 
years men go round all our country and 
count up all the people. The census we 
say is taken, and we stand astonished in 
the presence of forty millions of people. 
But not even the angels could take the 
census of God's empire. Suppose the 
swiftest of them should go forth and 
sweep in every direction on their mighty 
pinions, counting, counting, counting — I 
tell you their wings would droop before 
finishing a single corner of the empire. 
That census could not be taken — no, not 
even by the Gabriels. God himself alone 
can number all his subjects. 

A country may be very large and yet 
be very poor. It may be a Siberia — little 
more than rocks and ice-fields. It may be 
a Sahara — little more than burning sands. 
But not far away is another great country 
of a very different sort. It is naturally 



The Empire of God. 85 

full of all sorts of valuable things. It has 
rich soils, delightful climates, fat pastures, 
tempting grain-fields, fruits and plants of 
ten thousand useful kinds, founts, streams, 
rivers, lakes everywhere, great forests, 
productive fisheries, endless mines of coal 
and iron and silver and gold, sublime 
mountains, lovely vales, sweet home-sites 
without number — in a word, as we say, it 
is a country of " vast resources.'' Its peo- 
ple are proud of it. Its orators boast of 
it. Its friends look at it and are glad ; its 
enemies look at it and are afraid — so full 
is it, in air and water and land, of what 
goes to make a great and powerful empire. 
But there is an empire still richer. It 
includes the rich country I have just 
spoken of and many such countries besides. 
In it are all the rich farms of the world, 
all its earldoms, dukedoms, principalities ; 
all the palaces, treasuries, armies, fleets of 
kings and emperors ; all the useful things 
and splendid things that sleep in the 
bosom of seas or bosom of land ; all arts, 



86 Sunday Afteknoons. 

manufactures, civilizations ; all the might 
and speed that hide in winds and waters 
and fires and lightnings and earthquakes 
and magnetisms and gravities and glorious 
sweep of suns and stars ; all the strength 
of the strong, the wisdom of the wise, the 
courage of the brave, the beauty of the 
beautiful, the riches of the rich, the influ- 
ence of the influential, the goodness of the 
good, and ten thousand other sorts of 
wealth and power not to be found in this 
world — all belong to the empire of God. 
Suns and stars, with all their strange and 
glorious treasures, are in it. Heaven itself 
is in it. The infinite power and knowl- 
edge of God are every-where in it — to do 
all things that need to be done. Was 
ever so rich an empire ? No end to its 
stores and resources ! Mountains of them 
as high as heaven ! Oceans of them broad 
and deep as the sky ! Did you ever see 
the like ? We lift up both hands in amaze- 
ment. Such an empire can stand the strain 
of endless wars. It can afford to laugh at 



The Empire of God. 87 

the idea of being exhausted. Indeed, its 
resources can never become less — what 
goes out here comes back there; what 
disappears there reappears yonder in the 
same or in some other form. 

Houses sometimes so shine in the sun- 
beams that it is painful to look at them. 
I have seen cities on sunny hill-sides so lit 
up with noon-day splendors that at a dis- 
tance they looked like cities on fire. And 
I have known, and in part seen, a great 
empire even more glittering than glittering 
Genoa and Naples at their brightest — as 
glittering as the stars by night or as the 
sun himself by day. In fact, the sun and 
stars are only a dimmer part of this em- 
pire. What floods of brightness from our 
summer sun ! It dazzles, it blinds — we 
turn away our eyes in self-defense. But 
all the stars are just as bright — being 
themselves true suns with their glory 
somewhat lessened to 113 by distance. And 
even our earth, which often looks to us so 
dull and dark, if seen from afar would 



88 SlJXDAY AFTERNOONS. 

shine like the queenly moon or the bright 
evening-star. So it is with that part of 
the empire which we see, and so, no doubt. 
it is with that part of it which we do not 
see because so far away. All sparkles. 
The light covers all like royal robes. Re- 
motest provinces flash like gems. Some 
districts flame and dazzle more than noon- 
day suns. Spangles beyond counting, 
lamps without end, immense diamond-fields 
whose untold diamonds shine through, 
cities on cities all round the sky whose 
every window is blazing, as if for a vic- 
tory, with every possible color — such are 
even the frontiers of the glorious empire 
of God. Such, I say, are the frontiers. 
But if we could only see the capital — the 
London or Rome of this great empire, 
that central region we have learned to call 
Heaven — how dark all the rest would seem 
by the side of that wonderful shining 
which is "like unto a stone most precious, 
even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal, 
having the glory of God ! " 



The Empire of God. 89 

This most brilliant of empires is natu- 
rally the most famous of empires. There 
are some realms of which men only faintly 
hear. Once heard of, they scarcely get a 
second thought. No account is made of 
them. They are hardly more than names. 
History turns them off with a paragraph 
or a sentence. Perhaps the sentence is 
almost or quite a sneer. But then history 
has also her famous empires — empires 
much in the thoughts and on the lips of 
men, and to which, for some reason, men 
look up with great respect and admiration. 
Such was the Roman empire. Such were 
the empires of Alexander and Charlemagne 
and Napoleon. These made a great figure 
in their day. Almost everybody has 
heard of them. Their names are still 
sounding in the world like trumpets. 
When people talk of " glory " they are 
very apt to be thinking about the famous 
empires that raised a great wave in the 
world's affairs in their time, and which 
wave is running yet. 



90 Sunday Aftebxooxs. 

But see an empire more famous still. 
Who has Dot heard of the empire of the 
Creator ? Who has not heard great things 
of it — heard the very greatest and sub- 
limest things of it ? Not a corner of the 
universe where it is not known. Not a 
language within the great round of the 
heavens which does not speak of it with 
wonder. As for our corner, this little 
earth on which we live, all its religions 
are full of the idea, more or less vailed, of 
a Divine government. Hen's consciences 
are full of it. Much more the Bible — a 
book read in more than a hundred lan- 
guages, spoken weekly in thousands of 
churches, and studied daily in millions of 
homes. And not in vain. The world 
rings with the fame of the empire. It is 
spoken to in endless prayers. It is praised 
in ceaseless hymns. And the great prais- 
ing music swells louder and louder from 
age to age. Never was empire so much 
on the lips and in the thoughts of men — 
especially of wise and good men. They 



The Empire of God. 91 

believe glorious things of it. To them it 
has a mighty history. To them it is play- 
ing a sublime part. To them it shows a 
sublime procession of events all its own — 
kings and queens and great captains clad 
in purple and gold. Behold creations, 
miracles, prophecies, revelations, regenera- 
tions, salvations — see Grod in form of man, 
Jesus dying on the cross, sinners purified 
and forgiven, ascending to heaven — see 
glorious objects, glorious wars, glorious 
victories, glorious fruits of victories ! 
Never did empire spread such banners — 
never did such armies march beneath ! 
As to what it is, what it has clone, what 
it aims to do, what it certainly will do, 
this empire has no equal. It is the joy 
and trust and hope and love, as well as 
fear, of all the best of mankind. Their 
hearts build to it monuments high as 
heaven. Their hearts raise to it triumph- 
al arches that can span the sky. And yet 
this empire of God is not thought as much 
of and celebrated as splendidly here as it 



92 Sunday Afternoons. 

is in most worlds. So 1 think. I Tcnow 
that there is one immense country — so im- 
mense as to easily balance all the rest of 
the universe — which is always ringing, 
from one end of it to the other, with the 
praise of the King eternal, immortal, invis- 
ible ; and it almost seems as if I could 
hear at this moment a voice pouring down 
through the sky as the voice of many 
waters, and as the voice of a great thunder, 
and as the voice of harpers harping with 
their harps, saying, " Amen ; blessing and 
glory and thanksgiving and honor and 
might and power be to Him that sitteth 
on the throne for ever and ever." 

This famous empire is very old. Who 
can tell how old it is ? Not I nor any 
other man. I can easily tell how old the 
British empire is, and the German, and I 
am sure that not an empire in the world 
and of the world goes back six thousand 
years. But who knows when the empire 
of Grod began, or can tell a time when it 
was not ? Of course there was no begin- 



The Empire of God. 93 

ning whatever to that shoreless ocean of 
space in which swim the worlds as so many 
round, shining islands. The region itself 
has always existed, has always been full 
of the sight and power of Grod, and so has 
always been an empire of his. But there 
must have been a time when it was an 
empty empire — empty of every thing but 
its eternal King. There came a time when 
worlds began to roll and shine in it — when 
the first world started off on its golden 
round. When was that ? I cannot tell. 
Perhaps no angel, even, can tell. But it 
must have been a very distant time — much 
farther back than the founding of any other 
empire of which we know. Learned men 
will tell you that our world must have 
been rolling for millions of years. And, 
for one, I have no doubt that worlds be- 
yond counting are even older still — that it 
would be almost like counting eternity to 
count the years which have come and gone 
since untold stars began to twinkle in the 
sky at the bidding of the Creator. What 



94 Sunday Afteeistooks. 

a glorious antiquity ! How the little 
earthly empires that so loudly boast of 
their few centuries — how infant-like they 
look in the venerable presence of such an 
empire as this ! 

This empire, old as it is, has never had 
but one King. People think it something 
to tell of if the same family (father, son, 
grandson, and so on) manages to hold the 
same throne for a few hundred years. 
Kings die like other people. Indeed, they 
are apt to die sooner than some who lead 
quieter and less tempted lives. Forty or 
fifty years at the outside take away the 
healthiest of them. Then comes his suc- 
cessor, and, before long, another successor. 
And, after awhile, the royal family itself 
dies out, or is set aside for another. What 
is called a new dynasty begins to reign. 
So it has happened over and over again 
in France and other countries. So it is 
liable to happen at any moment in any 
empire the sun shines on. 

But one empire has never changed its 



The Empire of God. 95 

dynasty, or even its sovereign. Old as it 
is, almost ■ making us afraid with the 
mighty tale of its years, it has always had 
the same King. No successor has even 
been thought of. You will never hear of 
a new reign in this wide realm. Corona- 
tion Day will never come twice here. 
u God save the King n always means the 
same Person. Some of us are very glad 
that we do not have to see every now and 
then a regency, or a new election. God 
will never die. He will never resign in 
favor of some other. He will never throw 
up his kingly power in weariness and dis- 
gust, as some kings have done. But on, 
steadily on, will his reign proceed. The 
latest ages will see him on the throne as 
ever. From Everlasting to Everlasting is 
his name. I am glad of it. This is the 
King for me. I want no other. No other 
could begin to do as well. No better 
news can come to me than that the great 
and good God, the wisest and best and 
strongest of beings, will wear his crown 



96 Sujtoay Afteknoo:n t s. 

forever. Such good news lias come to 
roe. " Rejoice ye heaven, and let the 
earth be glad ; for the Lord God Omnipo- 
tent always reigneth. 1 ' No danger that 
you will some day (some night, rather) 
wake up to find the Great Throne vacant 
. or filled by a new sovereign. Suppose the 
worlds should some time hear through all 
their shining fleets the voice of a mighty 
angel proclaiming God to be dead — what 
a shock ! Deliver us from this whatever 
may happen ! We shall be delivered 
from it. All who come after us will be 
delivered from it. Not an insect need 
tremble in its sunbeam, not a star nor soul 
need tremble in its orbit lest the empire 
fall into new hands. Go calmly and 
brightly on, all ye worlds ; that last and 
worst of calamities will be spared you. 
" God sitteth king/<9;^z;^\" 

I have seen empires shake. I have seen 
them fall, time and again. And O how 
many, many, shaking, trembling, falling 
empires have been seen by those who have 



The Empire of God. 97 

gone before me, away back to the begin- 
ning ! The very ruins of some that were 
once famous and vast can hardly be found. 
History can count up not a few memorable 
examples. And I fully expect that before 
a great while some empires that now make 
much show in the world will shake as a 
tree does when a mighty wind gets hold 
of its branches and wrestles with them. 
They will strain and bow and fall head- 
long, as did the empires of Alexander and 
the Csesars. There is not an empire on 
this globe that is sure to be here ten years 
hence — I might as well have said ten days 
hence. A single clay, between dawn and 
dark, has laid low many a kingdom, and 
is likelv to do it again. Not a kingdom 
on earth but is sure to fall some dav, 
strong as it may now seem. In one way 
or another, at one time or another, down 
it will come, never to rise again. Nothing 
but its name will be left — perhaps not 
even that. Alas ! these trembling, falling 
things — human empires ! 



98 Sunday Afternoons. 

But cheer up, for I will now show you 
an empire that knows how to stand. No 
enemies will ever be able to smite it to the 
ground. It will never become so old and 
feeble as to fall of itself, like some old 
tree that has filled out its time, gradually 
grown rotten at heart and dry in branch, 
till at last a breath of wind or the weight 
of a bird tumbles it to the ground. From 
age to age it will stand mightily against 
time, mightily against rebellious men, 
mightily against even the rebellious angels 
with Satan at their, head. It never will 
fall — no, never ! no, never ! It never will 
be in the least danger of falling. Nothing 
will ever even make it tremble, or give it 
a single little jar such as would shake a 
dew-drop from its leaf. Of what other 
empire can this be said \ How glad I am 
that there is one country that can be 
counted on — one great empire that will 
stand unmoved and immovable all the 
long ages of eternity through ! I like to 
see something that is not liable any mo- 



The Empire of God 99 

ment to come clown into the dust, some- 
thing to anchor safely by, something that 
can neither burn nor drown nor decay, nor 
be smitten into ruins or even into danger 
— firmest of pyramids, with the whole 
creation for its base ! One feels stronger 
and safer even to see such an everlasting, 
immovable thing — especially in this world 
where winds and waves and earthquakes 
and steady blows of Time's great hammer 
bring, sooner or later, every thing else into 
the dust. 

One, two, three — perhaps I have known 
as many well-governed countries. One, 
two, thirty — certainly I have known as 
many countries ill-governed. Sometimes 
empires are woefully mismanaged. Disor- 
der reigns. There are no steady laws or the 
laws are bad. The people are not cared 
for — the sheep have no shepherd. " No 
shepherd,*" do I say ? The shepherd is a 
wolf. He watches, he tears, he devours. 
The people are robbed. The people are 
treated like slaves. The throne and palace 



100 Sum) ay Aftekxoojsts. 

glitter, the subjects groan and starve. 
Taxes, taxes, taxes — without measure and 
without end ! Blood, blood, blood — scaf- 
folds for the great and halters for the 
small ! Passed over from the great tyrant 
to lesser tyrants, then from the lesser to 
the least, by successive turns of the screw, 
through all the grades of wicked officers, 
the juices of the nation's life are squeezed 
out, Nothing but dry pumice is left. This 
is the way some empires have been gov- 
erned. Be thankful, children, that you 
were not born in any such empire, but in 
a very different one — the Empire of God. 
For this empire, vast as it is, is governed 
in a most noble and magnificent way. 
Nay, it is governed in a way that has 
never been equaled — in a way that never 
can be equaled — for it is a perfect way. 
You must consider that God, who governs 
this huge empire, is almighty and all-wise 
and all-good. This means that his inten- 
tions are the best possible. This means 
that he makes no mistakes. This means 



The Empire of God. 101 

that he can do all that power can do. So 
it means that the whole vast country, away 
through all the stars, is kept in the best 
possible order. Its vastness does not stand 
in the way of this. No Turkish empire is 
this — a few central provinces well kept 
under, but as one goes away from the capi- 
tal disorder ever increasing, until at last, 
on the frontiers, the government amounts 
to nothing. The most remote provinces of 
God's empire are as well cared for and 
regulated as the most central. All parts 
are thoroughly watched over, clay and 
night. Not a soul, not a worm, escapes 
notice. Each is cared for with an interest 
and zeal that never flag. The smallest be- 
ginnings of wrong things are at once no- 
ticed and put under checks. The smallest 
beginnings of right things are at once no- 
ticed and put under helps. The King 
knows just what to do to meet each case, 
and he always does the right thing at the 
right moment. So it happens that there is 
no other empire anywhere that is so capi- 



102 Sunday Afternoons. 

tally governed as this. Of course such 
things as plants, waters, winds, worlds, 
always do just as their Maker wishes to 
have them. He never has to find fault 
with them. But among spirits there is 
some disobedience, (much in this world and 
at least one other,) but it is always found 
out, stopped, or properly punished. You 
see there may be a splendid government 
over bad persons. However, I think that 
this government of God is so nobly man- 
aged that in most places in his empire 
there is no disobedience at all, but the peo- 
ple always do in all respects just as they 
ought. No doubt all such places are 
bright and happy. They are gardens. 
They are beautiful as sunsets. They are 
as beautiful as the lovely characters and 
lives that dwell in them. And, by and 
by, those parts of the empire which are 
now disturbed by wrong-doers will all be 
quieted, and the wrong-doers themselves 
will either become good-doers or will be 
shut up where they can do no more harm. 



The Laws of God. 103 



THE LAWS OF GOD. 

IF you should go into some men's houses 
you would see long rows of books 
with white leather covers, and if you 
should ask what sort of books thev are, 
you would be told that they are law-books. 
And what are law-books ? Why, they are 
books that tell what must be done. The 
people get together and choose a number 
of men to go to Washington and there 
talk over what it would be best for people 
to do, and when they have made up their 
minds they print what they want in news- 
papers and books, and bid the people do 
it. If anybody will not do it he shall be 
fined, or put in prison, or some other dis- 
agreeable thing shall be done to him. 
These printed sayings are called laws. 
But printed laws are not the only ones. 



104 Sunday Afternoons. 

By degrees men have fallen into the way 
of calling almost any thing a law that 
shows what a person wishes and also has a 
must with it. Now you know that there 
are a great many things besides printed 
paper that can do this. A mere look or 
motion of the hand can do it. When 
your father looks at you in a certain way, 
though he says not a word, you know that 
he means that you are to be silent, and 
that you must be. When your teacher 
points his finger at you as you sit in school, 
though he says nothing, you know that he 
means that you are not to move about so 
much, and that you must not. When, 
some time, your father brings you a letter, 
you know at once that you are to carry it 
to the post-office, and that you must not 
dream of doing otherwise, though he does 
not so much as open his lips ; or if at a 
quarter past nine o'clock in the morning 
he silently puts your school-books in your 
hand, you know that you are to start off 
at once for school and must do so. Now, 



The Laios of God. 105 

such things show what your parents and 
teachers and others want to have done, 
and mean to have you do, just as plainly 
as any printed paper could do it. So peo- 
ple have fallen into the way, and very 
properly, as I think, of calling very many 
things of this sort " commands " and 
" laws." 

I will now tell you something about 
the laws of that great Being of whom I 
was lately speaking to you, whose name is 
God. 

And, first, there are the laws which God 
has given to such things as have no soul 
— to such things as the sun, moon, and 
stars ; as stones, grass, flowers, and trees ; 
as insects, fishes, birds, and oxen. People 
sometimes call them natural laws. God 
made each of these soulless things for a 
good purpose, and so he put in each some- 
thing to show what he wanted it to be 
and do, and with it he put a must. It is 
all one as though he had said to the star, 
" Star, your business is to shine, and shine 



106 Sunday Afternoons. 

you must ! v to the tree, u Tree, your busi- 
ness is to give shade and beauty and fruit 
and fuel, and I bid you do it ! " to the 
cattle, u Cattle, your business is to work 
for and feed roan, and I command you to 
do it ! " There is something in the make 
of each of these things that shows us, when 
we look carefully at it, that God meant 
all this in regard to it. In short, he has 
put his law into it to make it be and do 
what he pleases. He has put his law into 
the bee to make it build its comb and 
gather its honey, into the bird to make it 
fly in the air, into the fish to make it swim 
in the water, into the ox to make it walk 
and work on the land. 

This sort of God's laws is given not 
only to such senseless and brute things as 
I have mentioned, but also to men, to you 
and me, and indeed to every thing God 
has made. He has so made vour bodies 
that unless yon do so and so they will be 
sick — that unless you do so and so they 
will not grow properly, but become weak, 



The Laws of God 107 

crooked, and painful. He has so made 
your minds that unless they have a plenty 
to do they will be unhappy — that unless 
they get knowledge, and practice well at 
trying to use it, they will never become 
strong and able to do much in the world. 
When we see how you are made it is very 
plain that God wants you to do a hundred 
things that might be mentioned, and also 
very plain that there is a must about it ; 
if you will not do them he means, and 
means that you shall understand, that 
you will have to suffer. Now the things 
in you that show all this are God's natural 
laws. You are bound to learn and obey 
them, just as though he had sent them to 
you printed on paper. Things that have 
not souls, for the most part, obey this sort 
of laws very well ; they cannot do other- 
wise, the must is so strong upon them. 
But such beings as we are can largely dis- 
obey ; but in that case we still do wrong, 
and will have to suffer for it. Not a few 
people have an idea that they can break 



108 Sunday Afternoons. 

this kind of God's laws without any sin, 
but it is not so. And it is well for people 
to begin to feel while they are children 
that it is not so, and to act accordingly. 
If you will begin now to be very careful 
in obeying God's natural laws it will save 
you a great many troubles and aches, and 
perhaps will save yon from early graves. 

But besides these laws of God there is 
another kind which senseless and brute 
things do not have, called the laws of con- 
science. These belong only to such things 
as have spirits, as men and angels. Some- 
thing within us, which God put there, tells 
us what is right and wrong, what things 
we ought to do and ought not to do, and 
if we will not do what it says it punishes 
us. Have you never felt it ? Have you 
not felt something within telling you that 
you must not do such and such things be- 
cause they would be wrong, and then when 
you have done them have you not felt very 
unhappy ? Well, that something within 
you is conscience. Its laws are God's 



The Laws of God. 109 

laws. They tell you what God wants you 
to do, and that you must do it or be un- 
happy. God put them in you for this very 
purpose. He does not give this sort of 
laws to stones, and trees, and birds, and 
oxen— they have no notion of right and 
wrong. It is only beings like you who 
have souls who have the ideas of ought 
and ought not. You are having such ideas 
all the while. Every few minutes you are 
feeling that it would not be right to do 
this and would be right to do that, and 
are feeling badly or pleasantly according 
as you do the one or the other. At any 
time when you think about such things 
your heart will tell you that it is wrong to 
tell falsehoods, to take things that do not 
belong to you, to disobey your parents, to 
be quarrelsome, to be idle and mischievous 
and wasteful and unthankful, and so on. 
Now you must remember that when you 
hear your heart telling you such things 
you are hearing God's laws. He has put 
them into your heart to show you what he 



110 SuiSTDAY AlTERlTOOlSrS. 

wants you to do, and he says, You must 
with each of them. The unpleasant feeling 
which you know you will have unless you 
do as he says is a part of this must. 

There is one thing about the laws of 
God in your heart which, perhaps, I ought 
not to fail to tell you of now, it is so very 
important for young people to know and 
act on it as early as they can. This is 
that, unless one is careful, these laws very 
easily get faded, blurred, rubbed out. 
Suppose one of you should go from home 
a long distance to school and his father 
should write him a letter telling him how 
he must behave, what books he must 
study, what clothes he must wear. Now 
if this boy should take no care of this 
letter, but let it lie about on the floor, in 
the dust, on chairs, benches, the ground, as 
might happen — rubbed against as chance 
would have it by any and every thing — 
what would be the consequence ? Why, 
the writing would get so faded and soiled 
that it would be a hard matter to read it, 



The Laws of God. Ill 

and an easy matter to read it wrongly. 
After a little while, though the writing 
was beautifully plain at first, it would be 
hard to spell out what the wishes of that 
father were, and very likely great mistakes 
would be made, and the father made to say 
things that he never intended to say. 
That little word " not " rubbed out would 
change his whole meaning. This will help 
you to understand how, if you are careless 
about your conscience and God's laws 
written on it, you will after awhile have 
them less plain than they now are — will 
have them faded, blurred, possibly quite 
rubbed out, and may make great and 
dreadful mistakes in trying to read them. 
I assure you that such things often hap- 
pen. So you must take great care of your 
consciences. You must not handle them 
roughly. You must not let soiled and 
soiling things come much against them. 
You must treat them as people do a beau- 
tiful picture made on the finest of paper — 
they set it in a gold frame, they cover it 



112 Sunday Aftebitooin's. 

with glass, they hang it up in the neatest 
and best room they have, and go in with 
their friends to see, admire, and study it 
as often as they can. 

But besides these laws of God written 
in consciences and hearts, there is still an- 
other kind nearly as much brighter, 
plainer, and nobler than these as these 
are brighter and nobler than the kind I 
first mentioned, and which are given to 
stones and other senseless and brutal 
things. Can you not think what this still 
better kind is ? What is that which tells 
us what we ought to do and must do in 
plainer words, in brighter and more heav- 
enly words, than our own hearts and con- 
sciences ever use ? What Book is that 
which good people love and honor so much 
as having come down to us out of heaven 
to tell us about God and what he wants 
us to do ? You see I am now speaking 
of the Bible — of God's laws in the Bible. 
The Bible is a law-hook. It tells us what 
God wants us to do — what he says we 



The Laws of God. 113 

must do — what he says we must do or be 
punished severely. If we do what it says 
he will take us to heaven, that most beau- 
tiful of all places, where he himself lives ; 
if not, he will send us to that most 
wretched of all places where live the evil 
angels. 

The Bible is full of the strongest kind 
of laws, and its must is of the strong- 
est kind. Some of its laws are the same 
that conscience gives us, but many of 
them are quite new, such as conscience 
says nothing about. Thus, it says that 
you must not tell untruths^nor steal, nor 
disobey your parents, nor be idle and mis- 
chievous and quarrelsome and unthankful, 
just as your own hearts do, (only the tone 
and the words are much stronger and 
swifter, and the must a great deal louder 
and more terrible,) but then it says very 
much more than this; for example, that 
you must keep one day in the week holy, 
that you must love the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and do your best to please him, and pray 



114 Sunday Afternoons. 

to God in his name, and ask pardon of 
your sins for his sake, and do many other 
things besides which your own hearts tell 
you nothing about. 

The first kind of God's laws is given 
to all things, of all kinds, in all places ; 
the second kind, the laws of conscience, 
are given only to things that have souls, 
as men and angels ; this third kind of 
which we have just been speaking, the 
laws of the Bible, are as yet given to 
a still smaller number of men, though 
God means that sooner or later it shall be 
given to the whole world. He means to 
have it done, and he means to have good 
people do it. If you live he will want 
you to help by giving money and in other 
ways. To be sure all persons all over the 
world have the laws of conscience, and, 
if they would, they could get along with 
these, and get to heaven at last without 
any Bible-laws ; but they will not. Peo- 
ple do not pay much attention to con- 
science where they have no Bible. In this 



The Laws of God. 115 

world Bible-laws and conscience-laws work 
best together. And then the Bible is the 
greater light of the two. Have yon not 
seen a little candle, not much larger than 
your finger, the wick all loaded with the 
black, choking snuff, sending out so poor 
a light that hardly any thing could be 
seen at the back of the room ? Well, this 
is like many a conscience. But the Bible 
is like the sun, shining brightly, shining 
far, flooding all things with light, making 
the waters glisten like silver, the mount- 
ains burn, the valleys smile, and all things 
above ground through half the world 
stand out to view in beautiful clearness. 
The candle is very useful where the sun 
cannot be had — it is very useful even 
when the sun is shining for the purpose 
of going down into cellars and searching 
out dark corners ; but after all, you know, 
the sun is the great thing, and very unfor- 
tunate is the man who has to do without 
it. So, very unfortunate are those who 
have no sun-Bible to light them — nothing 



116 Sunday Afternoons. 

but a candle-conscience, which indeed is 
very well in its place, but, after all, is 
nothing but a candle. 

Is the Bible God's glorious book of 
] aws ? Then the youngest child among 
you can see how it ought to be treated. 
Very respectfully, no doubt, more so than 
you would treat the greatest man in the 
world in case you should happen to meet 
him ; very studiously, no doubt, more so 
than you would any book that you are set 
to learn from in your schools or that wise 
men have written. Is it strange that Sab- 
bath-schools should be started to teach it 
to you, that ministers should take so much 
pains to explain and preach it every Sun- 
day, and that there should be great socie- 
ties kept up by much giving and working 
of good people in order to print it and 
send it cheaply into all parts of the world ? 
There is not another such book anywhere. 
It is the Book of books. We could do 
without all other books better than we 
could without this. You have sometimes 



The Laws of God. 117 

seen it bound in beautiful and costly 
leather, its leaves edged with gold, and 
perhaps pictured bars of silver or gold 
fastening up the delicate white leaves, 
and did you never think that never 
did book as well deserve so splendid a 
dress, and that the grand outside is but 
in keeping with the precious and heav- 
enly laws found within ? So you should 
think. 

I have but one other kind of God's 
laws to speak to you about. These are 
such laws as those who live in heaven get 
directly from God. The holy dead and 
the angels are with God. They see him 
and hear him, and get laws directly from 
his own lips. With his own voice he tells 
them what he wants them to do, the holy 
errands on which he wishes them to fly, 
the noble things he would have them do, 
far or near, for him, for people in this and 
other worlds, for themselves. But you 
ask, Is there any must about all this, any 
must in heaven ? How can one be per- 



118 Sunday Afternoons. 

fectly happy with a must sounding in his 
ears ? Yes, there is law even in heaven. 
Every angel and saint there knows that he 
cannot stay there unless he keeps good, 
and keeps doing as God wishes to have 
him. He knows that the first thing he 
should do contrary to God's will would 
drive him out of that holy place as swift 
as the lightning's flash. So all God's 
wishes in heaven have a mighty must at 
the end of them. They are, in fact, God's 
laws, as I have said. Now, in this world, 
though we have a good many of God's 
laws and several kinds of them, as you 
have seen, yet we have none of just this 
kind. God now never deals directly with 
living people, however good they may be. 
They never see him nor hear him. He 
never even sends an angel or a word of his 
own handwriting to them. Once it was 
not so. A great while ago he sometimes 
talked with a man face to face, as a man 
talks with his friend. Twice he wrote off 
some laws with his own finger on two 



The Laws of God. 119 

tables of stone, and sent them to a nation. 
Once he came down on a mountain in 
thunders and lightnings and earthquakes, 
and, with an awful voice that made people 
tremble as if they would die, spoke all 
the Ten Commandments to millions of 
people at once in one great congregation. 
Once he took a body such as we have and 
a voice like ours, and lived among men 
thirty-three years, teaching them and com- 
manding them with his own lips such 
things as he wished them to know and 
do. And a great many, many times he 
has sent angels with their swift snow-white 
wings and glorious forms and faces to bring 
his laws to men. But all this was long 
ago. He never does such things now. 
The only laws we shall ever get, from him 
as long as we live will be natural laws, 
conscience laws, and Bible laws ; but if in 
this world we try honestly to go according 
to these laws and trust in Christ, in the 
next world we shall have the other kind 
also to go by. There are millions and 



120 Sunday Afternoons. 

millions of children now in heaven who 
get laws from God's own mouth, and you 
will one day do the same if you now love 
and serve Christ according to what you 
know. And you need not be troubled 
about that mast; that will belong to even 
these higher laws of heaven as it does to all 
others that God gives us. It will be no 
trouble to you should you ever get to 
heaven. It will not make you feel as if 
tied up, forced, slaved. But you will feel 
glad that neither you nor anybody else 
will be allowed to turn heaven into a 
wicked place, you will so hate all sorts of 
wickedness. 

Now I have but a few more things to 
say. One is, that all these laws, of what- 
ever kind, that God gives, whether natural 
laws or conscience laws or Bible laws or 
heaven law r s, have not the least speck of 
wrong or fault about them : every one of 
them is beautifully and gloriously wise 
and good, and meant to do us good. The 
laws that men make are apt to have much 



The Laws of God 121 

that is bad about them, and not a few of 
them are all badness from beginning to 
end, and the more one minds them the 
worse off he is. But it is not so with any 
of God's laws. 

Another thing I wish to say is, that 
minding one kind of these laws will help 
you to mind all the rest. Thus, if you 
mind those laws which I first told you 
about,, called natural laws, it will help you 
to do what your consciences bid you clo ; 
and if you mind your consciences it will 
help you to clo what your Bibles bid you 
do ; and if you mind your Bibles it will 
help you to do what God will bid you do 
in heaven, speaking to you face to face. 
Indeed, if you go by your consciences you 
are sure to go by the Bible, and if you go 
by both of these you are sure at last to 
go by such laws as they have in heaven. 

The last thing I have to say is, that 
the better and longer you go according to 
any of these kinds of God's laws the pleas- 
anter you will find it and the better you 



122 Sunday Afternoons. 

will be. It is not so with many laws I 
could tell you of. It is not so with many 
of the laws that men make. Above all, 
it is not so with any of the laws that Sa- 
tan, your great enemy and mine, makes. 
The more you do as he wants to have you 
the more dissatisfied and the worse you 
will be. You will be the most wretched 
and the most wicked when you. obey him 
the most. If you want to be perfectly 
wretched and perfectly wicked you have 
only to obey him perfectly. On the other 
hand, if you would be perfectly happy 
and perfectly good you have only to obey 
God, your great Friend and Father, per- 
fectly. Which will you try to do ? A 
great many children are just now making 
wise answer to this question, and are set- 
ting out toward heaven. I hope you will 
be sure to join this bright army. They 
are bright and fair now as their feet pat- 
ter on, and their fresh young faces look 
up toward the glory that streams down 
from the heavenly hills; but the bright 



The Laws of God. 123 

faces will be brighter by and by, when 
they get nearer the glory. At last they 
will go in at the dazzling gates of 
the city whose streets are paved with 
gold. May every one of you be among 
them! 



124 Sunday Afternoons. 



VI 

THE WORD OF GOD. 

I LATELY told you of God's laws, 
which God has given his creatures to 
tell them what they must do. I then 
said that these laws are found most plainly 
and fully in the book we call the Bible. 

The word Bible means book. This book 
is so called because it is the Book, the 
Book of books, the best book in the world. 
And I hope that you will feel that it is 
really all this when I have finished telling 
you certain things about it. 

The first of these things is that God 
made the Bible. Men make the paper on 
w T hich it is printed, men do the printing 
and binding, men carry it all around the 
world to sell or give away ; but the 
thoughts in the Bible, and the way these 
thoughts are put together, and the words 



The Word of God. 125 

which carry them, all came first from God. 
He told holy men what to write and how 
to write it — sometimes by a great voice 
mid thunders and lightnings, sometimes 
by angels, and sometimes as by whispers 
to the thoughts. And they wrote just 
what he wanted to have written, in just 
the way he wanted it written. But peo- 
ple must have something to show that it 
was so, and so God gave these writers 
power to work miracles and speak prophe- 
cies. They cured sick people by a word, 
divided rivers, put storms to rest, called 
down fire from heaven, raised the dead. 
Of course reasonable men who saw such 
things done could not well help believing. 
And they copied and spread the writings 
they believed in, and at last printed, and 
bound, and carried them about every- 
where in all sorts of languages. So you 
see that while men have had much to do 
with the Bible, what is in the Bible came 
truly from God. It is just as if he had 
spoken all of it with his own voice. It is 



126 Suxday Afteexooxs. 

just as if he had written all of it with 
his own hand. It is just as if some day 
the nations had seen a brightness in the 
sky coming nearer and nearer. At last 
they saw it was a glorious hand holding a 
book, and when it was come nigh and 
some man bolder than the rest ventured 
to put out his hand and take it from the 
air where it sparkled and flashed, he found 
it to be the Bible. "Would he not call it 
God's Book \ Would he not say that God 
made it and brought it to us \ Most oer- 
tainly. And yet the book would not be 
more heavenly and divine than it now is. 
God made the Bible, and it is the orJ.y 
book he ever made. Some other books 
pretend to be his, but it is only a pretense. 
You would only have to read them a little 
to see plainly that they never could have 
come from such a being as God, they have 
so many foolish, untrue, and bad things in 
them. So the Bible stands alone. It is 
an only child. It has no brother or sis- 
ter among books. God has never given 



Tte Word of God. 127 

any other volume. He never will give 
any other, though the world should last a 
million of years. However large our li- 
braries mav sjet to be, and however beau- 
tiful and costly and famous some of the 
books that will be found in them, not one 
of them will deserve to be called divine — 
unless the Bible be among them. If this 
be anions; them, though but an old and 
rude and battered copy, it is worth vastly 
more than all the rest of the volumes on 
those long and loaded shelves. They are 
the works of men — of the men we call 
Plato, Cicero, Locke, Milton, and so on — 
but this is the only book in the wide 
world of which God is the author. 

There is but one divine book, but this 
one contains a great deal. It has histories, 
biographies, poems, proverbs, parables, 
letters, philosophies, prophecies. As you 
have already been told, it contains the laws 
of God's empire, with many helps toward 
understanding and using them. Besides 
these, it has what is called the Gospel — 



128 Sunday After^ooxs. 

an account of the way in which people 
who have broken these laws may be for- 
given and made better, and at last brought 
to heaven. That we may better understand 
and use the Law and Gospel many nar- 
ratives are given us. We are told of the 
creation of the world, of our first parents 
and how they fell into sin, and of many 
early ages of which we have no other his- 
tory. We are made to see how patriarchs, 
saints, kings, and nations lived, age after 
age — how God dealt with them — and so 
are made to see what sort of beings men 
are, what God is, and how he governs the 
world. Sometimes he sends angels clown, 
sometimes he teaches and warns men in 
dreams, sometimes prophets and holy 
men are made to do great wonders in his 
name, that the good may be helped and 
the bad punished, and all men know that 
there is a God to be feared — and to be 
loved also, for see what a melting story is 
told in the New Testament of how God 
so loved us as to give his Son to die for 



The Word of God, 129 

us. What a holy life that Saviour lived, 
what wise and helpful words he spoke, 
what wonderful things he did, how sadly 
he was treated, and how cruelly at last 
men nailed him to a cross and left him 
there in agony and blood till he was dead 
— all that sinners might be saved from sin 
and ruin ! Then follows the story of those 
who loved him and -undertook to tell the 
world about him, and to persuade men to 
love and serve him — what they suffered, 
what they did, what they said, and what 
success they had and will have in the 
world — all told in many chapters and 
books. Scattered largely through and 
among these books is knowledge for the 
ignorant, strength for the weak, succor for 
the tempted, songs for the devout, maxims 
for living, consolations for dying, truth and 
holy motives, and " powers of the world 
to come " for all men. 

There is in Paris a famous museum and 
picture gallery. They call it the Louvre. 
There one sees, among other valuable 



130 Sunday Afterxooks. 

things and old things, what is by far the 
oldest of all. What is it ? You would, 
perhaps, think it a painted stick with 
something of ornament about it, but you 
would be told that it is the gold scepter 
of Charlemagne, one of the most ancient of 
French monarchs. It is about a thousand 
years old. You would have to go back 
through fathers and grandfathers some 
thirty lives before you would come to 
the time when that scepter was new. 
You think of all that has happened in 
that long time, and which that golden rod 
could have seen had it been a living thing, 
and you almost look on it with awe, it is 
so old. Yes, but you know of another 
scepter older still. It is not made of gold 
and jewels — it is not in the shape of a 
knotty rod — it is in the form of a book, but 
not less a scepter for that, for it means 
just what scepter means, namely, royal 
government, the Government of God. 
The Bible is the oldest scepter in the 
world, the oldest of sceptered books, 



The Word of God. 131 

I have among; mv books some that are 
very old, and that have long been ruling 
the world like kings. They were written 
hundreds, and a few of them thousands, 
of years ago. But by far the oldest book 
I have is the Bible. On opening it at 
the title-page you might find that it was 
printed only ten years since, and the cover 
is fresh and the leaves are still delicately 
white, but for all that it is not only the 
oldest book I have, but the oldest anybody 
has. I mean that its thoughts were writ- 
ten out a long, long time ago, and that the 
earliest of them were written long before 
those of any other book in the world. It 
is the patriarch of books. It goes back to 
the time when mankind itself was hardly 
more than a little child. Since it was 
written walls and towers of solid rock 
have given way, cities have risen and pros- 
pered and perished. Empires have been 
set up, made famous, had long histories, 
and passed completely away. Generation 
after generation, wave upon wave, has 



132 Sunday Afternoons* 

beat and broken on the shore. But the 
Bible, that began before them all, has 
outlived them all. What a Methusaleh ! 
It is antiquity itself. The man who goes 
about searching for old and venerable 
things, relics of distant times, things that 
were old when America and even Europe 
were young, has not far to go for his best 
treasure. Let him lay hold of the first 
Bible that comes to hand. 

There was a time when there was only 
one copy of the Bible ; but it was too im- 
portant a book to remain but one, so men 
took to copying it off painfully by hand- 
writing, and often the pages were most 
beautifully written and pictured by their 
industrious pens. So Bibles became many. 
Still they were not many enough for the 
many people in many lands, and often a 
Bible was chained in a church or some 
other public place, so that persons who 
had none of their own might go there and 
read it or hear it read. But after a long 
while men found out how to print with 



The Word of God. 133 

types, and then Bibles became less costly 
and very numerous ; and now there is no 
book in the world which is so largely 
scattered every- where. Millions on mill- 
ions are printed every year. It has been 
printed in more than a hundred languages. 
No country of any size where it is not 
found. In such countries as ours no book 
is so common — almost every person has 
one or more copies. Taking the world 
through, there is no other book, however 
much liked, that has a tenth part of its 
readers. Gather the copies together from 
every land and they would make mount- 
ains and load fleets. It is in the libraries 
of scholars, the parlors of the rich, and the 
kitchens of the poor. It has become so 
cheap that the poorest can buy it : if one 
wiU not buy it he can have it for nothing, 
for nothing and welcome. If he will not 
even take it as a gift in the book form he 
must still have it in some form. The 
words, written or spoken, fill all the air. 
They are flying about in all directions like 



134 Sukday Afteknooxs. 

so many pictured birds, their throats filled 
with song. Spoken by ministers, taught 
in Sunday-schools, quoted in books and 
newspapers, sworn by the profane, praised 
by friends, abused by enemies — its sacred 
truths enter every man whether he will or 
not. The doors and windows of his soul can- 
not be shut close enough to shut them out. 
At eye and ear they lie in wait from 
morning to night, and almost from night 
to morning, to find some chance for enter- 
ing. They are already within, and are 
hiding in every corner of the memory, 
waiting with keen eyes for a fit time to 
rush forth and occupy all the chambers of 
the soul. It is well. God's Book needs 
to come down among men as come the 
star-showers in November ; nay, as come 
the showers of rain which manage to touch 
every blade of grass and wash every tree- 
leaf in the whole country — thickly, thickly. 
Every human being surely needs a copy 
of the Bible which he can read and study 
by himself, far more than the night needs 



The Word of God. 135 

stars or the dry earth needs rain, and good 
men mean that the time shall come when 
every one shall have it. But even now 
the Bible is the most widely circulated of 
all books. 

And it is the truest of books. It is 
perfectly true from beginning to end, not 
a single falsehood or mistake in all its 
thousand pages — a thing that cannot be 
said of any other book that ever was 
written. I once thought, as perhaps some 
of you may now think, that what is 
printed must of course be true, but that, 
I assure you, was a very considerable time 
ago. I soon learned that the very wisest 
and best book that man ever made has a 
great many false things in it, meant or 
not meant, and that some books are false 
almost from beginning to end. Now the 
Bible is very different from any of these, 
as you would suppose from the fact that 
God is the author of it. As it came from 
his hands there was not the smallest un- 
true thing in it, from the first page to the 



136 Sunday Afterxooxs. 

last. God has made no mistake in any of 
his writings, and far be it from us to think 
that he means to deceive anybody. He is 
too wise to do the one thing, and too good 
to do the other. The Bible is like a clear, 
still spring of water. If you look into it 
you see yourselves, the overhanging branch, 
and the blue sky, just as they really are. 
So by looking into the Bible we see every 
thing just as it is. There is no crack in 
the looking-glass : the pictures in it look 
precisely like the things they stand for. 
So you must not fail to believe every thing 
the time Bible says. Whoever dares to 
say, u It is not so," does not mind what he 
says — God's Book is right and true against 
all the world. It is safe to venture our 
lives, and even our sonls, on what it says. 
I would not care to venture such things 
on even some mathematical books I have 
seen. But the Bible is a great deal truer 
than any science or mathematics that ever 
men put together. 

Another and still better thing which I 



The Word of God 137 

wish to tell you about the Bible is, that it 
is the purest and holiest of books. True 
books may be bad. Some real things are 
just as vile and corrupting as they can 
be. Satan himself is a fact, and what a 
dreadful and wicked fact he is ! So I want 
to tell you that, in addition to all in the 
Bible being true, all in it is pure and 
holy. Not the least evil thing in it. It 
gives no bad advice, no bad laws. It en- 
courages no wrong feelings nor thoughts, 
but, on the contrary, discourages them. 
The histories it tells, the songs it sings, 
the letters it sends to us, are such that the 
more we read them the better we are likely 
to be. 

The whitest leaf of your newest book 
is not so clear and white as are all the 
truths this holy Book teaches. We call it 
the Holy Scriptures, and it is a true name. 
If we should do just as it tells us, our 
hearts and lives would be as clean and 
white as the newest snow. Of course I 
do not deny that there are other books in 



138 Sujstday Afternoons. 

the world that deserve to be called good, 
very good, too ; but not one of them is 
good like the Bible. Do yon suppose 
there is any book besides this that has not 
some spot of sin about it ? I tell you, 
No ! No sinning man ever made a sinless 
book. No muddy spring ever sent out 
water clear as crystal. There is always 
something evil in the book to show what 
sort of a person it came from. And often 
the book is so bad that one does not want 
even to touch it with his finger. We look 
at it with loathing. We put it into the 
fire with the tongs. Nothing short of fire 
will clean and sweeten it. It does us good 
to see it vanish in flame and smoke. 
Lately, tons of such books have been de- 
stroyed in our cities by the magistrates, 
and tons more remain to be destroyed. 
Heap up the fuel, kindle it in a hundred 
places at once, loud let the fires roar — 
they never had a better work to do, these 
books are so unclean. But that Book that 
comes from God is like God — purest and 



The Word of God. 139 

holiest of books, as God is the purest and 
holiest of beings. 

Some of you may wonder to hear a 
book called strong and mighty. You have 
heard of mighty men, and the mighty 
ocean, and a mighty wind ; but then these 
things are either very large things or they 
can do wonderful things. The Bible is 
not large ; even a little child can carry it 
about. It has no strong arms with which 
to lift and to smite. No, but for all that 
the Bible is mighty. It can do great and 
wonderful things. It has done them. It 
has made proud men humble. It has 
made angry men calm and gentle. Swear- 
ing men, stealing men, lying men, selfish 
men, hating and murdering men, it has 
made over into quite new persons, teach- 
ing them to dread and hate their old sins 
as so much new poison. Untold times it 
has done that hardest of all things, mak- 
ing the wicked good. In this way it has 
before now defeated armies, made and un- 
made empires, saved nations from ruin, 



140 Sunday Afternoons. 

and made them good, happy, and great. 
This is great doing. It is what no other 
book ever did or can do. No other book 
ever changed men's characters, and made 
wicked hearts holy, and washed vile lives 
clean. Yon can wash clean the outside of 
cups and platters — when our garments get 
black with wearing, much soap and much 
rubbing; will make them white ao^ain. 
But such things as wicked hearts and lives 
defy all human washing. God has to step 
in with his great power. And this power 
he has hid in his own book. Here is 
water and soap and fire for the unclean 
souls of men. It never gets soiled itself 
in cleansing others. Have you never- 
heard that it is " the power of God unto 
salvation ? " Of course it is mightier 
than even the power of Satan — which 
some books are. They are so vile and 
mischievous, it seems as if Satan were in 
them. And he is. They are Satan in the 
book form. But the Bible is mightier 
than they, as God's power is mightier 



The Word of God 141 

than Satan's. So the Bible will at last 
overcome all the books written against it, 
just as a great warrior, after standing up 
calmly for awhile amid, the strokes and 
thrusts of his puny enemies, as if to allow 
them to do their worst, at last lifts him- 
self to his full stature, and whirls among 
their ranks his glittering sword, and at 
once wins the field without a dent in his 
armor or loss of a feather from his plume 
— so will the Bible prove itself the might- 
iest of books. 

It is the most useful of books. Is the 
light useful, without which we cannot see 
or be warm or be healthy? Is the air 
useful, without which we cannot breathe? 
Is it useful to be true and pure and kind 
and just and unselfish and loving and gen- 
erous and noble and good ? Is it useful 
to be everlastingly saved and happy in 
heaven ? Then is the Bible useful — the 
most useful book the world has ever 
known — for it does more to make men 
what they should be than any and all 



142 SUOT)AY Ajtekkoons. 

other books. Put all others in one scale 
and the Bible in the other, the Bible would 
weigh them all down. I mean that the 
Bible is ivorth more to the world than all 
other books put together, however good 
and famous they may be. The world 
could get along better without them than 
without it. Men could not get along 
without the Bible at all. By it they learn 
the will of God. By it they are mightily 
persuaded to do that will. It shows them 
heaven, and how to gain it — hell, and how 
to shun it. It holds men back from folly 
and crime, and pushes them toward wis- 
dom and goodness as with the hand of a 
giant. It shows men how to live and how 
to die. No such comforter as the Bible ! 
When afflicted people can find no comfort 
and strength anywhere else they can find 
it here. Death itself can be made to 
smile and seem the best of friends by list- 
ening to its courageous words. It has 
given the world the best knowledge, the 
best homes, the best society, the best gov- 



The Word of God. 143 

ernments, the best characters and hopes 

and prospects it has. Take away it and 

that Holy Spirit who goes with it, and the 

earth would soon become too bad and 

miserable to be lived in. It stands up for 

all true and right things like a mighty 

champion, and if people would only let it 

have its way it would soon make these 

earthly deserts almost as delightful as 

heaven. This is what we are expecting it 

will do. This is what it is aiming to do. 

And by and by it will succeed gloriously. 

We do not know exactly ivlien, but that 

the time will come, sooner or later, is a 

sure matter. Some think they see signs 

of its coming even now. Just as a certain 

look of the sky shows that the fruitful 

shower is at hand — just as the ruddy 

streak gives token of the near day — so 

what the Bible is now doing more and 

more every year to bless and save men 

gives sign of a great future. And when 

that great future is come, and all the earth 

is swimming in the golden light which the 



144 SxTjSDAY Afternoons. 

Bible has poured, no one will dare to ask 
or answer such an absurd question as, " Is 
the Bible the most useful of books % " 
Yesterday the name of the Bible was 
Straggle, to-day it is Success, to-morrow it 
wall be Triumph.. And if all the good it 
has done, is doing, and will do could be 
brought together, it would make mountains 
greater than the Alps, landscapes fairer 
than Moses saw from Pisgah, skies brighter 
than bend over Chaldean shepherds. The 
Bible is worth its weight, we will not say 
in gold, but in souls. 

Looking back, we find no book so old 
as the Bible ; looking forward, we find 
none so sure never to perish or get out of 
date. It has already outlasted generations 
and empires — it is sure to outlast all gen- 
erations and empires yet to come. Of no 
other book can this be said. When you 
hear some other book, say the poems of 
Milton, called immortal, and the newspa- 
pers saying over and over that it will 
never die, you may venture to say that it 



The Word of God. 145 

is by no means sure to live a hundred 
years more. Good books and great books 
have been lost before now. Nothing but 
their names have come down to us — some- 
times not even so much. The last copy 
was burned in some great fire. Wars and 
troublous times came and swept them into 
dark corners and closets, never to be found 
more. What has happened may happen 
again. I should be afraid to say of any 
book you could bring me, save one, how- 
ever famous it may now be and however 
many copies of it may be scattered through 
the world, that it will last a thousand 
years. It may not last ten. But there is 
one book that will never get trampled to 
pieces under the hoofs of stormy times — 
one book which no neglect nor violence 
nor craft will be able to put an end to. It 
has been tried. Many Bibles have been 
set a burning. Many have been buried in 
dungeons and dead languages, and bidden 
to lie there and never rise more. The 

book has had many enemies, and they have 

10 



146 Sum) ay After^oo^s. 

done their best to kill it with jesting and 
scoffing and arguing and persecuting. But 
it could not be killed. It has shown no 
faculty for dying. It never had more 
breath in it than it has to-day. Never was 
it so famous and, on the whole, so power- 
ful. It is quite safe to say that neither the 
Bible nor any part will ever perish. Sin- 
gle copies of it may be destroyed — people 
may tear up or burn up the covers, the 
leaves, so that not a single printed word 
of it shall remain. What is to hinder % 
The Bible will burn like other books. 
Of course paper will kindle, and flame, 
and turn to smoke and ashes. But other 
copies will be left. Faithful souls here 
and there will keep the seed safe all over 
the world. God will always have an ark 
to carry it safely through every deluge. 
It will last as long as the world does. It 
was made to last/am;^ 9 , and it will. It 
has an iron constitution. And when the 
last day comes, and the world is set ablaze, 
and the trees and houses and books, and 



The Word of God 147 

even rocks and waters, catch like tinder, 
and good men go up in fiery chariots to 
heaven, then the Bible unhurt will go up 
with it and be studied and honored for- 
ever. Immortal Book, undying as the 
men it enlightens and saves ! 

Most books soon cease to be useful if 
they do not cease to exist. Circumstances 
alter. The times get beyond them. Once 
they answered a purpose, but now they 
are good for nothing. When a book be- 
comes good for nothing it^ought to be 
called dead, and dead most books become 
very soon after they are printed. Noth- 
ing more can be got out of them. If a 
man reads them the second time he loses 
his time. They will count in a catalogue, 
and, with a fair binding, will make a fair 
show on the shelves of a library — that is 
all. But the Bible is not like such books. 
It never gets out of elate. It suits one 
time as well as another. The more one 
reads it the more he finds in it. It is like 
those gold mines which grow richer the 



148 Stotday Aftekxooxs. 

deeper one digs. Lasting, inexhaustible 

mines we call them. Instead of becoming 
waste places, silent, deserted, littered with 
the broken tools and wastage of other 
days, the roar of cheerful labor deepens 
around them from age to age. 

In short, the Bible is a perfect book. 
Xo fault can reasonably be found with it. 
It is just what the world needs to have in 
a book from God. It has the best possi- 
ble object in view, and it is as well suited 
to gain its object as book can possibly be. 
Were one to add any thing to it he would 
harm it — were one to take away any thing 
from it he would harm it. So if one should 
make this and that chapter, this and that 
verse, change places. Hence we are threat- 
ened with a great punishment if we try to 
alter the book in any way whatever. It 
is because the Bible is "just right as it is. 
Of course it must be, coming as it does 
from God. Other books come from im- 
perfect men. and it would be foolish to 
expect a single one of them to be without 



The Word of God. 149 

fault. But this book comes from a perfect 
Being, and it would be equally foolish to 
expect in it any fault whatever. It has 
none — no scar, no wrinkle, no such thing. 
Just the book to come down from heaven 
— -just the book for God to give. Of what 
other book can as much be said ? I never 
saw any, never expect to see any. I have 
passed through many great libraries. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of volumes stood on 
the right hand and on the left, many of 
them in costly bindings and famous the 
world over, but I knew that not one of 
them was a perfect book. That glorious 
poem — every body knows it has its blem- 
ishes. The same of that best book of 
travels, of that best book of fiction, of 
that best book of science. We have but 
to look sharply, and lo ! something that 
might be bettered. Lo ! things here that 
should be added and things there that 
should be subtracted. Really, it is only a 
piece of a book. Really, it is a body 
without a hand or a foot, perhaps even 



150 Sunday Afteeistoois's. 

without a head. It was to have been ex- 
pected. A man who thinks that such mis- 
taken and sinful half-beings as men can 
make any other than half-books is very poor 
at thinking. But the Bible is no cripple, 
no sick man. No miracle need be wrought 
on it to give it perfect soundness. The 
rose joins with the lily in its cheek. Every 
rounded limb is there in just the right 
proportion. There is no weakness in its 
strength, no slowness in its swiftness, no 
homeliness in its beauty, no sickness in 
its health. In short, it is a perfect book. 

We love persons — O, how dearly some- 
times ! Your fathers and mothers love 
you so much that they could die for you. 
Almost any of them would do for you as 
did the freezing mother for her infant — 
taking the shawl from her own shoulders 
and wrapping it round the child that it 
might be found in the morning warm and 
living, and herself cold, stiff, dead. After 
this manner your mothers love you, and it 
is to be hoped that you know what it is 



The Won? of God. 151 

to love them back again. Something of 

the same tenderness is often felt toward 
things that are not persons ; for example, 
toward pictures of dead or absent friends, 
or books which they have left as keep- 
sakes. Some people love some books 
almost as dearly as if the lifeless things 
had hearts with which to give love in re- 
turn, especially people who make it their 
business to read and study. Such often 
get so strongly attached to the favorite 
histories, or poems, or books of science — 
perhaps to the best books of all these 
sorts — that it is hard to be away from 
them for a single day. But let me tell 
you that no book has ever been loved like 
the Bible — not by all people. Some have 
even hated it. and would have been glad 
to burn up every copy of it in the world. 
But greatly loved is it by good people of 
the best sort. Some have loved it so 
much that they would rather part with 
any thino; else than with it. Thev have 
tenderly pressed it to their lips and bosoms 



152 Sunday Afternoons. 

in feeble token of how precious their 
hearts felt it to be. Rather than give it 
up they have given up all other property, 
and even life itself — dying by prisons, by 
fire, and by sword. " Bring me the Book," 
said a dying man who had written many 
famous books himself. " What book ? " 
said his son. " There is but one Book," 
was the feeble answer. It was the Bible 
that dying man wanted. No other book 
did he care for then. What Sir Walter 
Scott felt just as he was leaving the world 
others have felt for many long years — es- 
pecially in sorrowful times. Then the 
good man looks toward the Bible with 
something of the feeling he has toward 
heaven. Somehow it has a faculty for 
drawing hearts to itself — like that some- 
times possessed by a most lovely and 
amiable living person whose voice is sweet- 
ness itself, whose eyes are like the dove's, 
and whose tender, pure, generous, winsome 
soul shines out of winsome form and feat- 
ure as the thousand lights of the evening 



The Word of God. 153 

worship stream through the painted win- 
dows of a cathedral. 

My young friends, I want to have this 
sacred and glorious Book dear to you. It 
ought to be. You have no better friend. 
It has been the friend of your fathers and 
mothers, never so far back. It has been 
the friend of your country from the begin- 
ning, and without it you would never have 
had a country worth having. When your 
forefathers came across the Atlantic to 
build new homes in what was then but 
wild woods they felt that the most precious 
thing they brought with them was a book 
— this Book. They came because of it — 
came that they might obey it as they un- 
derstood it, and make a new nation in 
which the Bible should be more than king 
and Elizabeth less than queen. Some held 
it bound in satin and gold, some in dress 
as coarse and cheap as the printer and 
binder could well give it, but to all it was 
the Book of books. They taught it to 
their children more carefully than they did 



154 Sottday Aftekkoons. 

any thing else. They meant that those 
who came after them should love and live 
by the Bible even as they themselves did. 
It would have pained them much to think 
the time would ever come when the dear 
country in the making of which they suf- 
fered so much would think little of what 
was so precious to them. I hope that 
time never loill come. Good men mean, 
if possible, to prevent its coming. This 
is, partly, why we have Sunday-schools. 
This is w T hy catechisms and hymns and 
Bible verses are taught you. This is why 
so many little books and papers are printed 
for you by many Christian publishers, and 
why some ministers get together the par- 
ish children by themselves and preach to 
them, as I am now doing to you. It is to 
bring those who in a few years will be 
the men and women of the land to love and 
live by the Bible. And if we succeed it will 
be a happy thing for the land which our 
fathers so loved and prayed for, and, some 
of them, died for; for the Bible is like a 



The Word of God 155 

certain man whom they called a landscape- 
gardener. He made it his business to take 
a rude spot of country, sometimes a few 
acres and sometimes thousands of acres, 
and so change it as to make it most de- 
lightful. He cut away at one point, he 
planted at another ; he carried away stones, 
he covered great rocks with green creep- 
ers, he drained swamps and made barren 
places rich, he made lakes and streams and 
fountains, he opened stretches of fine pros- 
pects, he laid out drives and walks that 
wound in and out to pleasant points of 
view and cosy nooks and grand outlooks. 
So the country became at last a picture. 
It was a wilderness ; now it is a garden, 
and people come great distances to see it. 
Pleasure-seekers wander about it in gay 
groups, the sickly are wheeled carefully 
through its pleasant shades and sunshines, 
painters paint it, poets sing it, all eyes 
feast on its beauties. All are refreshed, all 
are delighted, all praise it and the man 
whose taste and skill made it what it is. 



156 Sunday Afternoons. 

" Who could have thought it ! What a 
wonderful change from the poor, common, 
forbidding spot this was once to what it 
is now ! One who could make so much 
out of so little — roses out of weeds, fount- 
ains out of sands, and a delightful garden 
out of a tiresome spot — is a great genius, 
and deserves to be famous." And famous 
he becomes. He is sent for from near 
and far. Other waste places wish to be 
built up after the same beautiful manner. 
The demand for him is pressing. Appli- 
cations for his services stream in day and 
night. He can set his own prices. His 
fortune is made. 

See what the Bible is. See what it will 
do for our place and country and world if 
we succeed in getting the children to treat 
it as it ought to be treated — if we get 
them to honor it and submit themselves 
to it as that spot of rough land I have 
just spoken of was submitted to the land- 
scape-gardener. It will be quite a differ- 
ent parish, quite a different country, quite 



The Word of God 157 

a different world. It will be as if the 
wand of a mighty magician had been 
stretched over it. There will be fountains 
in the wilderness and streams in the desert. 
Unsightly things will disappear. Their 
places will be filled with all that is rich 
and fair — with truth and good will, and 
education and industry, and temperance 
and honesty, and good order and godliness, 
and all the virtues. Want will be cured 
as by famous medicine. Hurts by sin and 
sorrow will be tenderly bound up by num- 
berless good Samaritans on numberless 
roads to Jericho. In short, the change 
will be wondrously great in homes, schools, 
parishes, society, governments. 

I do not know how many fine landscapes 
you have seen, but this I know, that you 
never yet saw any half as fair as the Bible 
can make out of any place, however 
dreary, that is once fairly put into its 
hands. What a name such a great artist 
should have! What a loud call there 
should be for him ! As people send for 



158 Sunday Aftebnoons. 

that famous landscape-gardener from every 
quarter, and will do almost any thing to 
secure his help, so should we be most anx- 
ious to have that greater landscape-gar- 
dener, the Bible, set fairly to work on all 
this wicked and sorrowful world. Noth- 
ing else will so freshen and brighten it. 
Nothing else will do it any lasting good. 
Its chapters and verses are what the lamps 
are to the dark city streets, what the stars 
are to the lone, dark roads of the coun- 
try. Men get lost and perish without 
them. 

Such a book as this — so true, so in- 
structive, so pure, so useful, so mighty for 
good, so divine, indeed, the only divine 
book in all the world — you ought to make 
much of. Read it much. Try to under- 
stand it. Hang up hundreds of its verses 
in rich frames in your memories. Be- 
lieve all it tells you, do all it bids 
you, get others to do the same. Then 
you will grow up to be such men and 
women as God loves, and the world 



The Word of God. 159 

needs, and heaven will be sure to get at 
last. 

Heaven ! I see its gates open — its gates 
of pearl. I see many going in, some of 
you among them. Every one of them 
presses a Book to his bosom. "Ho, far 
away traveler, what is it thou dost clasp 
so tightly and fondly, even though thine 
eyes are just filling with the strange glo- 
ries of the city whose builder is God ? " 
No answer. He is too fall of the wonders 
he sees and hears to heed my voice though 
it sweep toward and by him like the prayer 
of the publican or of an apostle. But 
God heeds, and a softly flying thought 
comes to me from him, saying, That book 
is the Bible. It has cheered him and 
guided him; it has been light and food 
and shelter and rest and sword to him. 
To it he owes what he is, and where he is. 
He has carried that book on his heart all 
through the rough journey, and, now that 
he has come to the end, no wonder that 
his fingers, which just begin to glow in 



160 Sunday Afternoons. 

the golden light of heaven, close on it 
more fondly than ever. No wonder ! 

" May this blest volume ever lie 
Close to my heart and near my eye, 
Till life's last hour my soul engage, 
And be my chosen heritage." 



THE END. 



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